Welcome To The Luckiest Shop On Earth

How did one woman in Texas win the lottery not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times?

- Nathaniel Rich

The news on 2 July 2010 – much like the news of the preceding 18 months – was dreadful. The unemployment rate was approaching 10% and home sales were declining at a record rate. But on the bottom of the front page of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times local section, there was an article with happier news: ‘Bishop native wins millions for fourth time’. A 63-year-old woman named Joan R Ginther had won $10 million, the top prize in the Texas Lottery’s Extreme Payout scratchcard game.

Ginther’s cumulative winnings now totalled $20.4 million. Three of her golden tickets had been purchased in Bishop, Texas, a small, poor town two hours north of the Mexican border. The fourth ticket was bought in neighbouring Kingsville. “She’s obviously been born under a lucky star,” said a Texas Lottery Commission spokesman, who said they did not suspect foul play. Ginther could not be reached for comment.

Ginther’s story was syndicated by hundreds of newspapers worldwide, under headlines like ‘Lottery queen’ and ‘Luckiest woman on Earth’. Websites devoted to the paranormal, the occult, and Christianity concluded that Ginther was a master of visualisation techniques; that the constellations had been in perfect alignment; that the woman must have prayed really hard.

A four-time lottery winner did seem unlikely, but how unlikely was it really? Mathematicians were consulted. They found the odds of such a thing occurring were one in eighteen septillion. Eighteen septillion looks like this:18,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000.