In 1992, Stefan Mandel won $27 million (£22m) in the Virginia jackpot on behalf of an Australian syndicate. But it wasn’t through luck; he schemed and planned to win it by buying every possible combination of numbers.

Astonishingly, it was his 14th jackpot win – so how did he do it? "He doesn't just go out and buy random tickets," NPR’s Planet Money producer Alex Goldmark reported. "He goes to the library and he starts reading math paper after math paper after math paper, and he comes up with a formula for buying blocks of tickets that he thinks should guarantee him a prize."

Thinking of trying out a Mandel-style system for lottery luck? Think again. Today's lottery system has changed irrevocably, with the number of combinations now too great to guess winning numbers accurately.