Beat The Lotto director Ross Whittaker: "And then the lottery arrived – and the message was, maybe you wouldn’t need a job at all. It was tremendously exciting"

By the early 1990s, the National Lottery was more than just a flutter in Ireland – it was a weekly ritual, a collective dream, and, for some, a legitimate shot at transformation. Into this world of scratch cards and spinning wheels came a plot so audacious it could have been lifted from a caper film.

The new documentary Beat The Lotto, directed by Ross Whitaker (Katie, When Ali Came To Ireland), tells the story of accountant and mathematician Stefan Klincewicz and his syndicate – a loose collection of schemers, dreamers and gamblers – who, in 1992, tried to outwit the system by attempting to buy up every possible number combination.

The film paints a vivid picture of a post-recession Ireland that was still grappling with high unemployment and mass emigration – an atmosphere in which the Lotto, launched in 1987, felt like a beam of light.

“So many days in commerce class, we were just talking about unemployment,” Whitaker says. “The idea was that you would leave school and hopefully you might get a job. Like, it wasn’t even like you had aspirations to get a particular job. It was that you might get a job, full stop. And then the lottery arrived – and the message was, maybe you wouldn’t need a job at all. It was tremendously exciting.”

But then the syndicate came along, threatening to undo the sense of equality, chance and hope that the lotto offered. The heart of their plan, and Whitaker’s film, lies in Klincewicz’s scheme. Using mathematical logic, he proposed a plan to buy up every one of the 1,947,792 possible combinations.

The idea was simple, if expensive: with a guaranteed return on four-number matches, and a £1.7 million jackpot on offer, the risk suddenly looked like a viable investment.

“If you bought all the combinations, you’d get six-and-a-half-thousand match-fours,” Whitaker explains. “Multiply that by £100, and you’re guaranteed back £650,000 – before you even factor in any five-number matches or the jackpot itself. That’s what made it a calculated risk.”

For those who (like me) feel their brains turn to mush when trying to understand maths, fear not – Beat The Lotto pulses with energy, humour and character. The film is cut with grainy, golden-hued Irish TV footage, and features a tense interview between Pat Kenny and Klincewicz, as well as new interviews with syndicate members and old clips featuring Ray Bates, then the public face of the National Lottery.

“Ray was so charismatic and fun,” Whitaker says. “They were lucky to have him. He made the Lotto feel like this colourful, exciting thing.”

However, there are no new interviews with any representatives of the Lotto, who are still a little sore about the whole debacle.

“I had hoped to tell the story from both sides – the charm of the institution and the cheekiness of the syndicate” says Whitaker, “but the Lottery weren’t particularly interested in participating!”
That tension – between the hope and order of the Lotto and the mischief of those trying to beat it – animates the whole film. It’s a David-and-Goliath story, but the roles aren’t always fixed.

“What I found interesting,” says Whitaker, “was that into this hopeful, lovely thing came people who went, well, let’s game the system. And yet, the more I got to know them, the less villainous they seemed. It became about the craic as much as the cash.”

Still, there were risks. The syndicate had to operate in secret, drawing suspicion as members dashed around obscure post offices buying thousands of tickets. The National Lottery, realising something was up, took to the media to express concern – and the public began to take sides.

“The coverage was wild,” says Whitaker. “Vox-pops on the streets of Dublin were split: some saying ‘fair play,’ others insisting the Lotto was a force for good. People were emotionally invested. The Lottery paid for my local tennis courts, the community hall. It meant something.”

That tension appealed to Whitaker’s storytelling sensibilities.

“The syndicate stood to lose a lot of money. For the Lottery, they stood to lose maybe the confidence of the citizens. So it felt like there were stakes on both sides, and that was really attractive to me.”
In this way, Beat The Lotto becomes more than a clever caper – it’s a portrait of a moment.

“Looking back, 1992 was a pivotal year,” Whitaker reflects. “There was the Bishop Eamonn Casey scandal, Charles Haughey resigned, Italia ’90 was still in the rearview. There was a sense of change in the air. And it’s only with distance – 30 years on – that we can really see that shift.”

Indeed, as with many of Whitaker’s documentaries – Katie, The Boys in Green – Beat The Lotto is about more than its headline, and a lot about national identity. In this case, it’s a story about risk, ambition, mischief, and the joy of finding a loophole – but also one about institutions, trust, and the dreams people latch onto when the odds feel stacked against them.

For an evening’s entertainment at the cinema, it’s a sure bet.

• Beat The Lotto is in cinemas now.