Let’s play lotto
Since the lotto jackpot grew exponentially in the past few weeks my wife and I got onboard the bandwagon of millionaire wannabe’s and visited a lotto outlet for the first time together. It’s not that I’ve never played lotto but we usually have someone at the office (or the house help) to place bets for us. But this time – with the jackpot swelling to nearly 300 million (a week ago) – we could not entrust our lotto ambitions to anyone.
Being one of the biggest jackpot prizes in the history of the PCSO Lottery it’s hard to stay indifferent. And it’s even harder to stay focused. I have deliriously daydreamed how I’d manage the win: take P3 million (just need to buy something badly) and place the rest in offshore stocks and bonds in three currencies. I shall keep my job and still live within my pay. If all goes well as (imaginarily) planned I would have doubled the money in 7 to 10 years and donated 20 percent of the gains to local charity. The exercise definitely honed my rusty math skills and made driving in severe traffic, worthwhile.
En route to our P600 million (in 10 years) we should be involved in the journey every step of the way. It is also the first time we’re doing conjugal gambling, beginner’s level. If beginner’s luck mattered, then we’re being ceremonious and dramatic about it. We needed to be physically present at the betting station sans the parking problem and the light evening drizzle. Good fortune is not without sacrifice and the long queues gave us a hard time like the “road to heaven.” I needed to feel that.
“A bit of hardship shall make us savor this victory upcoming,” I consoled myself.
Looking around, I saw some people hurriedly filling their slips, totally familiar with the Lotto card’s format which took us time to study and understand. We even made a slight mistake by shading instead of marking the boxes opposite the numbers with short ticks.
“One need not be a college grad to do this right,” I wallowed in self-embarrassment. It’s not rocket science. The people around us have been doing this correctly since the Philippines shifted from Sweepstakes to Lotto before the turn of the century. As a first timer, I just felt so incompetent.
My wife vetted for her special (predictable) numbers ergo her birth dates and our son’s. Like many lotto bettors she believes in the power of special numbers and vowed to bet on the same set of digits which – from henceforth – shall be her “alaga.”
And she’s not ill-advised. A former lotto winner had used the same numbers for a decade before hitting jackpot. Lotto aficionados establish their “alaga” from numbers that appeared in their dreams, their birthdays, anniversaries, advice from fortune tellers, the almanac, numerology and a host of other esoteric sources.
I was more random. I learned over the years that winning lotto combinations are not “evenly-distributed” in ones, tens, twenties or thirties but could be a skewed combination of high and low numbers. Last week’s winning combination even had 32, 34 and 35 in sequence so I think it pays to bet for a highly arbitrary series: 1,19,22,44,45,7. We left the Lotto station with so much hope for a brighter future which was totally out of character for someone like me who believes the good life is the fruit of sheer hard work. The Lotto way is just too easy, even dreamy.
And I guess you probably know the ending to our lotto adventure otherwise I would not be writing this column. We would have been in hiding to safeguard both our P300 million and maybe our lives. Talk about life-changing moments in this country such as Lotto – a lot of those who hit jackpot may be richer but not a tad happier. At least they’re never as free to walk around town at whim.
Take the case of a Lotto winner from Novaliches Quezon City who ended up abandoning his house, his livelihood, his friends and connections as he left for the unknown. He may be P249 million richer but he constantly lives with threats of being kidnapped or killed for his new-found wealth.
A Lotto winner and his family from Norzagaray, Bulacan was less fortunate. They were kidnapped by friends whom they asked to accompany them in claiming their P79 million win. There’s also a Lotto winner from Aurora, who after patiently waiting for months to claim his prize, was told that he was holding a “fake” ticket which he bought from a betting station in Cubao. That Lotto outlet eventually and mysteriously “disappeared” from its rented stall.
So far at least two Lotto winners are believed to have been killed while several others have gone from rags to riches and back to rags after mismanaging their wins. Of course these stories are urban legends since winning the lottery is often hushed up for security reasons. The “balato” seekers (i.e. family, friends, neighbors, criminals, rebels) alone could also send winners into instantaneous hiding. Crab mentality is much worse and fatal.
Many people who have won the Lotto saw their luck as the beginning of happiness without realizing the happiest part of the entire experience is just the winning announcement. After the excitement and the frenzy subsided, a life of worry began.
Or I may just be sour-grapping. Not even one of my numbers came out.*
