The question you opened
Buying every ticket in Virginia
In 1992 the Virginia lottery drew six numbers from 44, so 7,059,052 tickets covered every outcome.
What did an Australian syndicate do when the jackpot passed 27 million dollars?
It set out to buy every combination, and it won.
At a dollar a ticket, covering all 7,059,052 lines cost about a quarter of the prize. The group filed more than five million of them in a few days.
The Virginia game asked for six numbers out of 44. The count of possible tickets is 44 choose 6, which works out at 7,059,052. At a dollar a ticket, holding every line cost about 7.06 million dollars, and in February 1992 the jackpot stood at 27 million. Buying the whole board turned a lottery into a purchase.
An Australian investment syndicate tried it. Tickets were pre printed, couriers fanned out across chains of stores, and more than five million of the lines were filed before the draw closed. Coverage was incomplete because retailers could not process the volume in time, which meant the guarantee had a hole in it.
The syndicate got lucky in the ordinary sense as well as the arithmetical one: the winning line was among the tickets they held. United Press International reported the aftermath in March 1992, and investigators concluded that nothing illegal had been done. Three numbers decide whether this ever works. The cover cost, which is fixed by the format.
The jackpot, which has to be several times the cover cost. And the number of other winners, which is the risk that cannot be bought away. Sharing a 27 million dollar prize two ways turns a profit into a large loss, and the more publicity a rolling jackpot attracts, the more tickets other people buy. Secondary prizes matter more than they look.
Covering every combination also collects every match five, match four, and match three prize in the game, and those added several hundred thousand dollars here. In some formats they are the whole margin. Lotteries responded with rules that make the operation impossible: purchase limits, larger number pools, and terminals that refuse block orders. Buying the board was a gap in a specification, and specifications get patched.
Technique: Compare the cover cost to the prize
Source checked 2026-09-06