For more than ten years in Michigan, USA, one could see an extremely entertaining sight: a man of about 65 entered the store responsible for the sale of lottery tickets and began to buy them. Not one or two, not twenty or thirty, and not even a hundred, which already seemed like a huge amount - no, he bought tens of thousands of tickets. Literally everything that a store could offer from opening to closing, spending thousands of dollars on it.
However, what seemed like eccentricity or even eccentricity was actually a well-designed and calculated strategy of the skilled mathematician Jerry Selby, who understood how to hack a lottery.
For all these years, “holes” in the logic of building a lottery have allowed to receive more than $ 27 million (1.7 billion rubles). At the same time, he calculated the chance to earn one lazy summer morning, when Selby got one single lottery ticket.
Lottery
It was a new game that caught Jerry's attention. It was called WinFall. One ticket left at a dollar price, the minimum jackpot set was $ 2 million. The player had to guess 6 numbers, from 1 to 49. The main feature that caught Selby's attention was the redistribution of accumulated funds when the jackpot reached $ 5 million. Until there is money collected in several runs, then distributed to the winners in a certain, "distribution" circulation.
Maths
Jerry thought for a moment. The chance to guess three numbers out of six was one in fifty-four with a win of five dollars. Four numbers will bring one hundred dollars, but one chance was one and a half thousand tickets.
But in distribution runs, the gain increased tenfold! For three numbers you could get fifty, and for four - a thousand dollars!
Jerry made some preliminary calculations and amazedly issued: "Damn, we have a positive return here!"
But, of course, the calculations remained only a theory, and testing it became a matter of principle for a man. Since the wife did not approve of gambling, as, however, they did not interest Selby, the man decided to make a secret check in order to, if the theory was confirmed, declare it with reinforced concrete arguments.
It remained to wait for that very “distribution” circulation.
Hour X
When the lottery announced the next five millionth jackpot, Jerry got ready, took the money and went to a neighboring city so that no one would be interested in his occupation.
He chose the right terminal, entrusted the computer to choose numbers for it, because manually doing this would be incredibly long and difficult, and spent $ 2,200 in the terminal, receiving the corresponding number of tickets.
So, checking the tickets on the spot, not risking taking them home, Selby found that his winnings amounted to $ 2150, that is, he lost $ 50.
Nevertheless, this fit into Jerry’s theory: the amateur mathematician understood that it was a matter of quantity and ratios, and the problem was that he had to buy a little more tickets.
This theory still needed a final, final check, and the man ventured to try again. Therefore, the next week, visiting the bank and taking $ 3,400, he went to the same city and bought tickets again.
Again, without risking taking them home, he checked them on the spot, right in the store. From a long, monotonous work, my eyes started to hurt and my hands got tired, but almost 3,500 tickets later Jerry ... received a prize of $ 6,300 !!!
So, he had an impressive 46 percent profit on his hands!
But was it a single progress? Did he prove his theory?
Selby made the final attempt before telling his wife about the experiment.This time the rate was really big for him: 8 thousand dollars.
8000 lottery tickets. Long, very long hours of sorting. But here's the bottom line: $ 15,700! Profit at 49%!
With these numbers in his hands, he could tell about his find to his family!
Confession
Their family went on vacation with friends, and in an Alabama park, sitting by the fire, he told Marge about his find.
He made the calculations and deduced the formula. He played the lottery. He won, receiving more than 40% of the profit.
Marge thought for a moment, but in the end she only smiled and then laughed. She knew that her husband was busy with something “astounding,” he could never stop when something fascinated him. And did not 15 thousand dollars prove it right?
Of course he could do it.
People who are keen on mathematics have more than once found flaws in the system that the checking lotteries missed.
Candidate of Mathematical Sciences Joan Ginter won four million jackpots in Texas four times, and his education proved that he found his own anomalies in the game, because he passed all subsequent checks with flying colors.
So did Jerry Selby.
Lottery as a way to make money
The man did not violate any rules - he honestly bought tickets, and did not exchange winning ones or entered into an agreement with lottery workers.
It was difficult to just print tickets in machines in large enough runs, and then check them for a long time. In addition, they also kept losing lotteries to present to possible inspectors. This was a matter of principle.
Soon the couple already knew all the stores in which they sold tickets. Later, they even founded a club of 25 people who did this together with an elderly couple. A record 720,000 dollars could already go to the stake !!!
And each time, both the spouses and their club won!
Beginning of the End
After 9 years, a similar mistake in the lotteries was discovered. Journalists raised a real scandal, claiming that the lottery is becoming a win-win if you bet more than $ 100,000! Some, having “cracked” the game, profit, while other people simply finance them.
Jerry was astounded. How could he be exposed as a fraudster if he bought tickets under the same conditions as other people? How could he be blamed if he acted strictly according to the established rules and honestly paid all taxes with gains, as he should have?
The American press and authorities took everything into their own hands.
A lot of checks later revealed that the big players (and the Selby club was not the only one who understood the game system) did not rob the “little people” at all, as the press tried to beat. On the contrary, attracting large players, although they remained the winners, made it possible to seriously increase the tax turnover and proved to be very useful.
At the same time, single players had the same chances as the mass ones, they simply increased the chance of winning by quantity.
However, lottery officials drew conclusions, such a distribution of funds was stopped, and the loophole left by them was closed.
For 9 years, the Jerry and Marge club won $ 27 million - 7.75 million after paying all taxes. They were honestly divided between club members.
The last time the Selby family played in 2012.
