This is how this math genius won the lottery 14 times in a row

You know what they say when the odds of something happening are really low? “It’s like winning the lottery.” But what would you say if you found out that a man actually won the lottery 14 times over 30 years? It seems unlikely, but that’s what actually happened to mathematical genius Stefan Mandel.

O awesome.club wants to tell the story of the economist who made productive use of numbers.

It all started in the 1960s, when a poor Romanian accountant was trying to survive and feed his family. Stefan Mandel couldn’t find a job with a better salary, so he came up with a solution: play the lottery. He thought of himself as a “weekend mathematician” because he was fascinated by numbers and spent his free time working on his own algorithm which he dubbed “combinatorial condensation”.

He claimed that this secret algorithm accurately revealed 5 numbers of a 6-number Romanian lottery. So he put the plan into action. With the support of his friends and family, Mandel was able to buy a huge amount of tickets with the numbers he was most likely to win. He won the first prize, which was approximately $19,000, and gave a share to all those who helped him.

With what he won, Mandel went to Western Europe. For four years he moved from one country to another until he decided to settle in Australia. When he got his Australian citizenship, he had access to all the features of the Commonwealth of Nations, which meant he could participate in the UK lottery system, which proved to be far less complicated than the Romanian, which he had deciphered before.

His new method was ingenious thanks to its simplicity. He just needed to buy all the number combinations, and he did. With the help of investors who believed in him, he bought thousands of tickets that won him not just the first prize, but the second, third and smaller ones. Over the years, he managed to keep winning the lottery by creating what he called a “lottery syndicate”: a network of hundreds of investors who believed in his method. But the authorities changed the laws, making it nearly impossible to go ahead with their plan. That’s when he started thinking about North America.

What Mandel wanted was to make headlines around the world, so he chose to participate in the Virginia lottery in the United States. It was 1992, and the top prize was 27 million dollars, which meant he had to buy 7 million in tickets. But luck was on his side. Not only did he win the lottery’s first prize, he won second and third, as well as dozens of other smaller prizes. Altogether, he earned about 30 million dollars and made international headlines, just as he wanted.

US officials did not welcome the move, so they changed their laws. Mandel tried to do another one of his tricks, which only landed him a few months in prison as he broke the law. That must have made him come to his senses, because today he is retired and lives on a tropical Australian island, as the man who has won the most lottery in the world.

Do you like to play the lottery? What would be the first thing you would do if you won the grand prize? Tell us in the comments!