Has the Scratch Card Code Been Cracked?

Lottery scratch cards are among the most popular games offered around the world, and millions of players, me included, take their chance on these tickets each day.  But now, it seems, a professor of mathematics in Texas may have cracked the code of at least one lottery.  The 63 year old has reportedly been dubbed the world’s luckiest woman after winning multi million jackpots FOUR times on the Texas High Stakes Lottery cards.  But is she lucky or has she cracked the code?  After all, the odds-to-one of her winning the lottery four times are the same as if you took every single grain of sand on the planet and multiplied them by 18!

So how did Joan Ginther win the lottery four times, her latest haul being $10 million? It’s still a mystery, but obviously there is speculation that these are not fluke wins.

Let’s take a look at some facts:

• Three of the winning tickets were purchased in the same gas station in the dusty town of Bishop, Texas (where she grew up); population: 3,300.
• The fourth scratch card was bought in the neighboring town of Kingsville.
• Ginther doesn’t live in Bishop anymore – she moved 1,400 miles away to Las Vegas…
• She is a professional statistician and a former maths professor, having earned her degree at the elite Stanford University.
• The three latest wins were won in a period of five short years.
• Locals say (and these are only rumors) that whenever a new shipment of the high stakes cards come in, the prof comes in, buys them in bulk and then drives to a cheap hotel to start scratching them.

So has Joan Ginther figured out something to do with the sequence of numbers or is she, as the Texas Lottery wants us to continue believing, simply one very, very lucky woman?

I’m not a typical skeptic and I like giving people the benefit of the doubt, but I have a (giant) inkling that the good professor has figured out something that we mere mortals haven’t yet, and she’s riding on this knowledge with fantastical winnings!!