Jerry and Marge Go Large: How much money did Jerry and Marge Selbee win and how?

Paramount+ original dramedy Jerry and Marge Go Large is a true story inspired by Jason Fagone's 2018 Huffington Post article about a real-life couple who hacked the lottery to win millions. Directed by David Frankel, known for Devil Wears Prada and Marley & Me, the film is set to premiere on the streaming platform on June 17, 2022.

Jerry and Marge Selbee are a retired couple from Michigan who created quite a buzz in 2012 by amassing over $26 million in lottery wins. Portraying the couple in the film are Emmy Award winner Bryan Cranston and Oscar nominee Annette Bening. Jerry and Marge Go Large will showcase the riveting lottery adventure undertaken by the Selbees.

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Jerry and Marge Go Large: How much did the retired Michigan couple make?

Gerald "Jerry" Selbee and his wife Marjorie Selbee are the couple that inspired Jerry and Marge Go Large. After they decided to retire from running their own convenience store in 2000, working the lottery was not a part of their retirement plans. But one fine morning while visiting the convenience store he used to run, Jerry came across a lottery game called Winfall.

Having been a mathematics prodigy with a knack for solving puzzles, Jerry used his computing abilities when he looked at the structure of the game. In an interview with 60 Minutes, he revealed that it took him a total of 3 minutes to decode his chances of winning and profiting from the game.

After trying his hand at the game with smaller investments and nearly doubling them, Jerry set up a 32-member investment corporation comprised of his family and others from the town. With hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in lottery tickets, the corporation made over $26 million in profits from lottery over a period of nine years.

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How did the duo from Jerry and Marge Go Large hack the lottery?

At the outset, the Selbees' endeavour sounds nothing short of a fraudulent scheme. However, what they did was totally legal and, as Jerry puts it, "basic arithmetics." In eighth grade, Jerry learned about his gifted mathematical abilities and after that, there was no stopping him. He saw puzzles to be solved in everyday life and used his knowledge of mathematics to derive analytical insights.

When he came across a lottery game called Winfall in 2003, he discovered a unique "rolldown" feature that was not there in other high-paying lottery games. The lottery tickets for the game cost $1 each and the player would have to pick six numbers between 1 and 49. After the numbers were drawn, six correct matches would win the jackpot, priced at $2 million or higher. The lesser the number of correct matches, the lesser the amount won.

The "rolldown" feature meant that if the jackpot prize reached the highest amount of $5 million dollars without anybody winning it for a while, the prize money would roll down to fewer matched numbers. A roll-down happened approximately every six weeks and was announced ahead of time.

Jerry quickly ran the odds and realized that there was a 1-in-54 chance of correctly matching three out of six numbers and a 1-in-1500 chance to pick four correct numbers. He also realized that playing during the roll-down week was more beneficial than any other week.

After computing all of this and more in his head in under three minutes, he figured if he bought enough tickets, he was guaranteed to win. While speaking with 60 Minutes correspondent Jon Wertheim, Jerry and Merge revealed that they had $18 million worth of losing tickets stored in 65 tubs. However, Jerry and others made more than enough to compensate for it.

Jerry and Marge Go Large is a dramedy that covers the couple's surreal journey of legally exploiting a lottery system loophole that made them millionaires. Catch it on June 17, 2022 only on Paramount+.