CASANOVA'S WINNING TICKET - by Alan Donald Published by A Harmless Drudge at Smashwords Copyright 2015 Alan Donald.

CASANOVA'S WINNING TICKET

                    by

                Alan Donald

Published by A Harmless Drudge at Smashwords

        Copyright 2015 Alan Donald.

It was a good day for the Canadian Lottery Corporation when, in 2005, it paid out a record
$54.3 million to 17 oil and gas workers in Camrose, Alberta. The corporation was probably just
as pleased four years later when the sole winner -- Guelph, Ontario, bachelor Jason Rinaldi --
claimed his prize of $35.3 million. Of course, the winners of the 6/49 draws were happy too, but
the real beneficiaries of any lottery are the governments who run it. Big payouts are good
advertising, and governments are sharply aware that the more lottery tickets they sell, the more
money they make in the long run. But perhaps the lottery executives -- and the winners -- should
direct some grateful thoughts to the memory of a scoundrel better known for his talents in
bedding women than for his financial acumen B Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, lover,
mathematician, jailbird.
    The story of the modern lottery starts on a hot day in Venice during the summer of 1756.
Casanova was sitting on his makeshift bed, contemplating the pointed iron bar he had uncovered
in the rubble on the attic floor during his daily exercise. Could this be the way out? It had been a
year since the famed adventurer and seducer had been thrown into the Leads, the stifling jail
beneath the lead-lined roof of the Doge’s Palace. The charge had been heresy, but it was more
likely that Casanova had crossed the wrong man or made an imprudent choice of a lover. Even
Casanova was unsure of his real offence. Not that it worried him; it was not explanations he was
after, it was freedom. He studied the ceiling of his cell. Lead, he knew, was much softer than
iron. Gingerly, he stood on the bed and began to scrape at the dull black ceiling.
    As Casanova hacked his way to freedom in Venice, far to the north-west in Paris, Joseph de
Pâris-Duverney, governor of L’Ecole Militaire, France’s prestigious military college, was facing
his own dilemma. The school was twenty million francs in debt. Worse, the college was owned
by the King. To be short of one’s own money was one thing; to be short of the King’s money
was a worry of an entirely different magnitude, and Duverney feared the wrath of Louis XV.
Sitting alone in his office, Duverney again worked through the two possible solutions. One was
to raise fees, a move guaranteed to inflame the ire of the gentry who sent their sons to the
college. The other was to adopt the harebrained scheme proposed by those Sicilian scoundrels,

the Calzabigi brothers. But, no. The Calzabigi plan would likely land the King even more in
debt.
        At the time, neither man could conceive of it, but Casanova’s determination to escape,
coupled with Duverney’s desperation, was to launch one of the largest money-making
enterprises the world has seen, a project that would make Casanova a millionaire within a year
and that is still raking in billions for governments around the world. The eventual meeting of the
Italian roué, the French bureaucrat and a pair of brilliant schemers was to launch the first
successful national lottery, the ancestor of our familiar 6/49.
     State lotteries were not new, even in the Eighteenth Century, but they tended to be clumsy
schemes in which the state itself ran a heavy chance of losing money. Take the early English
lotteries, which resembled the familiar door-prize system in which one ticket is drawn for a fixed
prize. That method brought more risk to the state than the bettors. In a lottery in 1567 fewer than
one tenth of the 400,000 tickets offered were sold. Imagine an opera company offering a $50,000
car for a prize and selling only a thousand $10 tickets. Queen Elizabeth had likely been
displeased.
     The unwieldy "blanks lottery", favoured in Eighteenth Century England, was a better bet
for the bookies who ran it. But it was a tedious nightmare to run. The blanks used two drums.
Into one drum went numbered slips corresponding to the tickets sold; in the other drum, some of
the tickets named prizes, but most were blank. The drawing, which could take days if bettors
were numerous, consisted of matching a draw from the first drum (bettors’ numbers) with a draw
made simultaneously from the second (a prize or, more likely, a blank).
        Of course, the running of lotteries was not on Casanova’s mind that summer as he scraped
away at the ceiling. Summer turned to autumn, but one November night he decided the hole was
big enough. He levered himself onto the roof, scrambled into the palace itself through a nearby
skylight, casually descended the many staircases of the deserted palace and strolled out. Using
the few coins in pocket, he caught a gondola to the city of Mestre on the mainland. Weary and
hungry, but never one for half measures, Casanova sought refuge in a plush house on the
outskirts of the city. It turned out to be the residence of the chief of the secret police, Capitano
della Campagna, who, as luck would have it, was out looking for the infamous escapee,
Casanova. But Signora della Campagna (a very pretty, pregnant woman by Casanova’s own

account) was home. Mistaking the well-spoken and charming Casanova for a nobleman who had
fallen upon hard times, she offered him bed and board for the night.
    Casanova left early the next morning, refreshed in mind and body. In the next few days, he
put his formidable charm to work; he borrowed money, he begged food and he scrounged clothes
and transportation from his extensive network of friends, admirers and lovers. In Munich, he
encountered a rich former acquaintance, Madame Rivière, who gladly offered him a comfortable
-- and probably very companionable -- ride to Paris in her private carriage. He arrived on January
5, 1757.
    Most of us showing up in a foreign capital wearing second-hand clothes and with little cash
would be hard put to survive. But Casanova aimed high. Borrowing money and capitalizing both
on his many friends and on the sensational news of his escape from the Leads, he ate at the best
houses, schmoozed with the wealthy and dressed well. Even the Venetian ambassador welcomed
him -- discreetly. This lifestyle, however, was leaving Casanova in debt. So he followed the
money: he cultivated friends in the office of the comptroller-general, the French equivalent of the
minister of finance. And it was here that he heard about Duverney’s problems. He saw his
chance.
     Now, it is Casanova himself who has left us an account of the meeting between the two
men, so some skepticism is in order. This much is clear, though: Casanova announced to
Duverney that he had a secret plan that would bring millions to the King’s coffers, “. . .with only
the expense of collecting it.” Duverney was unimpressed.
    “I know what you are thinking of, Signor Casanova,” he said.
     In fact, Casanova -- ever the gambler -- had been bluffing. He went for a walk in the
Tuileries Garden, alternately racking his brains for a plan that would bring in a vast fortune and
wondering what scheme Duverney had in mind. It says much about Casanova’s personality that
he was encouraged rather than dismayed by the turn of events. If he failed to come up with a
scheme, then, whatever Duverney’s plan was, he would claim that that was his idea too. Two
days later, Duverney called Casanova in for a second meeting and presented him with a folio.
    “There is your plan, Signor Casanova.”
    Casanova read and, being no mathematical slouch, understood immediately. Worked out in
meticulous detail was a scheme for a lottery that could not fail. Its authors were Giovanni

Calzabigi, a Sicilian diplomat, and his brother Ranieri. It was modeled on the method of
selection of the Genoan governing council.
     The northern Italian city of Genoa was run by the Great Council of five, chosen by lot. City
officials put ninety names of influential citizens in a drum and drew five at random. It had
become a habit for Genoans to place bets on names drawn from the bin. And it did not take
bookmakers long to realize that they did not need the city drawing to entice gamblers. They took
to placing ninety numbers in a drum and taking bets on what numbers would be drawn.
Experience, more than mathematics, told them what the payoff should be in order to maintain a
healthy profit.
     Casanova went with Giovanni Calzabigi to visit Ranieri, a bed-ridden genius who suffered
from a chronic skin disease. Taking time away from writing opera libretti for his friend Cristoph
von Gluck, Ranieri had worked out the exact probabilities and required payoffs for a lottery in
which five numbers were drawn from ninety. The principle of drawing numbers is the one that
drives the modern 6/49, in which six numbers are drawn from forty-nine. Calzabigi's scheme
differed from the 6/49 in other ways, too. For one thing, bettors could wager any amount. The
winnings were a simple multiple of the bet: bettors who wagered a lot stood a chance of winning
a lot. And there were three choices. The extrait simple was a bet on a single number; bettors won
if that number was one of the five drawn. For the ambe simple, you chose two numbers and won
if both of them came up. The terne was the least likely: you chose three numbers and all had to
come up. Getting four or five correct numbers counted as a terne. Lastly, the Calzabigi lottery
was not the modern pari-mutuel scheme in which winners share the prize. Two bettors who came
out winners would each take the full prize: the lottery corporation was on the hook for double the
winnings.
     In spite of the threat of massive payouts, Casanova and the Calzabigis grasped one factor
that modern governments now see clearly: no matter how big an occasional prize, in the long run
the state would win. Guaranteed. This fact had so far escaped Duverney and the college’s board
of governors, who were terrified that one early win would clean out the royal coffers. Casanova
saw that his persuasive personality was needed: he demanded and got an audience with the
board.
     It took three hours, but eventually Casanova’s mathematical arguments, backed by his
considerable charm won the day. It did no harm that the board had invited the celebrated

mathematician Jean Le Rond D’Alembert to attend the meeting as a consultant. Casanova,
backed by D’Alembert, invoked a statistical phenomenon called the law of large numbers,
sometimes known as the law of averages: although the state cannot escape the occasional big
payout, the law of large numbers predicts with great certainty the average profit for the state over
many draws. Casanova also pointed to insurance companies “. . .all of them rich and flourishing.
. . .” as examples of this rule.
     The decision came down within a week. The lottery was on. Giovanni Calzabigi and
Casanova were appointed directors, with small salaries of 4000 francs a year. The big money
came from the franchises. There was no central bank: the council sold franchises, which were
responsible for the vending of tickets and the disbursement of prizes. It was up to the franchise
holder to pay winnings from his own pocket and then apply to the government for
reimbursement. Nevertheless, the franchises kept a large percentage of the profits.
     The council gave Casanova six offices. He immediately sold five for 2000 francs apiece,
opened the sixth in a rich area of Paris and promptly printed and posted bills guaranteeing
payment of prizes within twenty-four hours of each monthly draw. In his autobiography, he
proudly notes that he was immediately flooded with demands for tickets. His pockets full of
tickets, he was a welcome guest at rich salons. And he always paid on time, even though once,
early in the lottery, he was forced to borrow money to pay a prize. He soon made it back. Within
a few weeks, he was a millionaire.
     The lottery flourished long after Casanova had died in 1798. By then it had spread well
beyond Paris. Offices had opened in other cities. Brand-new lotteries, also sponsored by the
government, sprang up in some cities including Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Lille and Lyon. Bettors in
anywhere could buy tickets for any of the many lotteries. News of each draw travelled instantly
by coach and horse throughout the country, bringing income to the spendthrift royal family.
     By the time Louis XVI became king in 1774, he must have been quite happy with the
success for it helped his debt-ridden government. That is, until 1793 when he lost interest in
financial matters in an unfortunate encounter with a guillotine.
     Casanova, never one to hang around, soon moved on -- to Holland, to Germany, to Naples,
to London. He fell in and out of love; he was rich, he was poor; he was in and out of jail. He died
in Bavaria at age 73 after penning his massive Histoire de ma Vie, a 12-volume autobiography,
which recounts his adventures, both chaste and amorous. But his most enduring legacy is evident

any time you enter a convenience store, news agent or drug store. Buy a lottery ticket, but be
careful. Think of Casanova’s insight: in the long run, the state always wins.
                                                 ###

                                          About the author

    Alan Donald is a retired statistician. His full-length novel, The Lost Journals of William
Tanner, which recounts the adventures of the eponymous Nineteenth Century scientist and
reprobate, is available at Smashwords.com. Alan Donald blogs occasionally at
www.aharmlessdrudge.wordpress.com.