As a young mathematician, in the 1960s, Stefan Mandel's salary was only 10 USD/month (about 253,000 VND). Later, his salary increased to 88 USD/month (~2.2 million VND) but it was still not enough for his family's expenses.

At that time, the daily repetitive work made him feel depressed. Combined with the pressure of having two children born one after another, the financial burden weighed heavily on his shoulders. At this time, he thought of making quick money by risking his life by buying lottery tickets. Being a person with a quick mind for numbers, he spent time learning how to apply the Probability Theory of Mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci to life.

Based on the Combinatorial condensation method, after many years of research, he wrote the Number Selection Algorithm . Specifically, if the player chooses 6 numbers in the range 1-49, the winning rate is 1/13,983,816. If he chooses 15 numbers, the chance increases to 1/2,794. With this algorithm, he believes that he will win at least the Second Prize and the Jackpot prize is 1/10.

In addition, he also found that the value of the jackpot was three times higher than the cost of buying a set of numbers. That is, if you choose 6 numbers in the range 1-40, you can create 3,838,380 sets of numbers. The price of a lottery ticket at that time was 1 USD (~25,000 VND), buying a set of numbers would cost 3.8 million USD (~96 billion VND). If you win after deducting taxes, you will receive 10 million USD (~253 billion VND).

With this algorithm, in 1987, he was lucky to win the lottery for the first time and received 97,000 USD (~2.4 billion VND). With this amount of money, he took his wife and children to live abroad. After 4 years in Europe, his family moved to Australia to settle down. At this time, he cooperated with 4 friends to form a "lottery alliance" and promised to split the money if he won the prize.

The formula that helped the mathematician score 14 times in the hundreds of billions.png
Mr. Stefan Mandel - the man who won the lottery 14 times. Photo source: YNet News

After moving to Australia, he developed a new way of playing the lottery. Instead of writing down millions of combinations by hand as before, he used a computer to run an algorithm that automatically printed out every possible number. In this way, he and his investors won the lottery 12 times in a row. However, his method was discovered by the Australian authorities. Therefore, they issued many new regulations to prevent him from winning the lottery again.

After winning 13 times in Romania and Australia, he felt that it was not enough so he continued to target Virginia (USA). At that time, the Virginia lottery allowed players to buy unlimited tickets and print them at home, then bring them to a store or gas station to pay. Notably, the lottery series in Virginia was 1-44, while other states were 1-54.

If a player chooses 6 numbers from the range 1-44, only 7.1 million sets of numbers are created, usually 25 million. To increase the chance of winning, he had to mobilize 2,500 investors to contribute 7.1 million USD to buy the selected set of numbers. However, on the payment date, some places limited the quantity, so he only owned 140,000 lottery tickets (700 sets of numbers).

Luckily, on February 12, 1992, he and his partner won the Virginia lottery jackpot worth 27 million USD (~684 billion VND). After deducting taxes and expenses, each investor received 1,400 USD (~35 million VND), and he alone took home 1.7 million USD (~43 billion VND).

According to Sohu , after winning the lottery 14 times, the total amount of money he received was about 15 million USD (~380 billion VND). After that, he used this money to start a business and invest. But in 1995, he announced bankruptcy because his investment projects were all unsuccessful.

To date, his formula has not worked because countries have enacted new laws to prevent players from using tricks to win prizes. Currently, he lives a peaceful life in Vanuatu (an island nation in the South Pacific - near Australia). Recalling his heyday, he said he was a risk-taker but always with his own calculations.

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