How is it that a penny slot machine designed to pay out no more than $9,025 displayed a jackpot message of $42.9 million?

Paul Kusznirewicz, perhaps the world's most unlucky lottery "winner," thought he had struck it big at the Georgian Downs casino in Innisfil this past December, when the 2-cent slot machine he had been playing for 20 minutes exploded in lights and music.

A message: "Call attendant. You have won a jackpot of $42.9 million" popped up on the screen, the 55-year-old says.

But when casino personnel arrived to investigate, they told the Wasaga Beach resident that the slot machine had messed up and he wasn't entitled to any winnings.

All Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. machines display a notice that malfunctions void all pays and plays.

"This machine clearly malfunctioned. The most it can possibly pay out is $9,025," said OLG spokesperson Allison Sparkes.

So where did the $42.9 million come from?

Ryerson computer science professor Sophie Quigley thinks she has the answer.

"This looks like a casting error," she said. "It's a programming error (that occurs when) a computer tries to interpret information one way, but it interprets it the wrong way."

In a confusing nutshell: Computers speak in a language of bits. Information is represented with zeros and ones. Very often, these numbers – both positive and negative – are stored in 32-bit sequences.

Still with me?

In this system, the number —1 can also be represented as 4294967295. Count that many pennies as dollars and you see 42,949,672.95.

"Which seems awfully close to the number that was displayed on the slot machine," Quigley said.

The complicated mathematical explanation is as follows: When you fill 32 bits with 1s, this creates a binary number that represents +2 to the power of 32, minus 1, as 4294967295. It's a glitch that those working in computer programming run into now and again.

"It sounds as though it was meant to be a negative number, —1, but the program interpreted it to be a huge positive number," Quigley said.

"The question now is: `What's going on inside the slot machine?' Why are there negative numbers in slot machine programming?"

Quigley has a theory for that, too.

With each play, the slot machine was counting down to zero – the jackpot. For whatever reason, an error occurred, and the countdown went below zero, the point when it was supposed to announce a big prize.

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As a result, the number 42,949,672.95 popped on the screen.

It's just a theory, but at this point, it seems to make the most sense.

Yesterday, the OLG said it had nothing more to say on the matter and that the Kusznirewicz lawsuit is now working its way through the courts.