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Who hasn’t dreamed of seeing the right numbers appear on the screen and pocketing a staggering sum?
The lottery? An equation to solve
For most players, winning the lottery is a miracle. But for Stefan Mandel, it was a simple matter of mathematics. This Romanian mathematician achieved the feat of hitting the jackpot 14 times, by applying an unstoppable formula. His secret? Logical reasoning and formidable organization.
Stefan Mandel left nothing to chance. He developed a strategy he called “combinatorial condensation”. The idea was simple: instead of choosing numbers by feel, he calculated all possible combinations and found a way to buy enough tickets to guarantee a win. But financing such a project on his own was impossible. So he set up a syndicate of investors, the International Lotto Fund, which raised the necessary funds to give it a go… and hit the jackpot on several occasions.
A meticulous plan to raise $27 million
One of his biggest coups took place in 1992 in the United States. The mathematician spotted a golden opportunity with the Virginia lottery. The jackpot was worth $27 million, and the rules of the game were ideal for his system: players had to choose six numbers from 44, giving a total of 7,059,052 possible combinations. Admittedly, this represented a colossal number of tickets to buy, but the mathematician had a secret weapon: the ability to print tickets directly at home.
He and his team methodically prepared millions of tickets in advance, filling in every potential winning combination. On the day of the draw, the plan worked to perfection: Stefan Mandel and his syndicate not only scooped the jackpot, but also nearly a million dollars in ancillary winnings thanks to tickets ranked second, third and fourth.
Naturally, such a masterstroke did not go unnoticed. The authorities immediately suspected fraud and tried to block the winnings. An Australian agent even alerted the Virginia lottery, suspecting money laundering. But after a thorough investigation, it turned out that everything was perfectly legal: the mathematician had simply played by the rules… and his precious mathematics.
Today, far from the drawing rooms and strategic calculations, Stefan Mandel enjoys a peaceful retirement on the island of Vanuatu. “I take risks, but always in a calculated way,” he confided to a Romanian newspaper in 2012. A philosophy that has enabled him to beat the lottery… and become a legend.
