Winning the lottery is supposed to come down to luck. But Stefan Mandel, a Romanian-born mathematician, found a way to make the numbers work in his favor – a strategy successful enough that he and his lottery syndicate won money from lottery games 14 times.
Mandel didn’t have some sort of magical formula. Instead, he focused on mathematics.
For comparison, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are around 1 in 302.5 million, according to UNILAD. For the average player, those numbers make a jackpot win almost impossible.
Mandel, however, realized that there was another way to approach the game.
Who is Stefan Mandel?
His strategy centered on purchasing enough tickets to cover every possible number combination. The idea was simple in theory, although putting it into practice required enormous amounts of money and a large group of people willing to participate.
Mandel began by convincing groups of investors to pool their cash together in a lottery syndicate. With enough money behind them, they could purchase huge numbers of tickets and dramatically increase their chances of winning.
His first successful attempt brought the group $19,000. Mandel personally walked away with just under $4,000.
That payout may not sound particularly impressive today, but it gave Mandel the money he needed to take his strategy further.
