It’s no secret that playing the lottery is a sucker’s game. The stats are crystal clear regarding the probability of winning those jackpots; you’re just donating money. But we keep playing because … somebody must win.
Consider Lotto 6/49, the first nation-wide Canadian lottery game launched back in 1982. The odds of winning the classic jackpot, currently at $5,000,000, is about 1 in 14,000,000. You’re more likely to be struck by lightning, struck by a meteorite, or contract a flesh-eating bacterium. Why, I’ll bet there’s a significantly greater chance of this post going viral than me ever winning a lottery jackpot.
Still, statistics are mind-numbing things that don’t always mean much to most of us. So, I wanted to run a little experiment to put those probabilities into real context and Christmas gave me the perfect opening.
Buying Christmas gifts for family, most of whom have all their needs and most of their wants covered, is a chore. I don’t like the idea of just giving money, but I’m honestly running out of good ideas. And with family members aging, even gifts of experience aren’t the best option anymore. Therefore, in 2022 I relented and purchased groups of family members one-year subscriptions to every Lotto 6/49 draw in 2023.
I created two groups. Each member of each group would pick a number which I would combine to create a two six-digit lottery numbers. I purchased two annual 6/49 subscriptions and we all waited for the windfall to start rolling in.
Before I reveal our winnings, I want to share some information about Lotto 6/49. A couple of years ago, it changed from a strait-forward jackpot lottery to a more complicated mix of possible wins.
There remains the classic jackpot which stands at $5,000,000 weekly and doesn’t grow if unclaimed. An additional gold ball jackpot was added to spice up the game. Each ticket purchase is assigned a ten-digit gold ball number. Each draw, there is one winner drawn from these assigned numbers. A ball is then drawn from a collection of 30, of which 1 is gold and 29 are white.
If a white ball is drawn, the winner gets $1,000,000 and the gold ball jackpot, which starts at $10,000,000, increases by $2,000,000. Drawn white balls are not replaced so the odds of getting the gold ball in subsequent draws increases. When a gold ball is finally drawn, the whole process starts anew at the next draw.
In the year of 2023, there were a total of 5 Lotto 6/49 gold ball jackpot winners for a combined total of $272,000,000! The remaining 99 white ball winners took home a combined $99,000,000. Add to this the 30 classic jackpot winners throughout the year at $5,000,000 each, and there was a total of $521,000,000 in Lotto 6/49 jackpot winnings for the year of my little experiment.
That, of course, does not include all the non-jackpot winnings and free tickets given out each week. Needless to say, there was some impressive coin available to me and my family member groups should luck have shone on us in 2023.
It did not. In fact, proving the dreaded statistics valid, our winnings were rather anemic. Not only did we come nowhere close to recouping my initial outlay of monies, but an argument can be made that these were the worst Christmas gifts ever. The second group surely must think so.
The accumulated $45 in cash winnings was subsequently gambled on LottoMax tickets which promptly won sweet bugger all. And just like that, the money was all gone, our family fortunes remaining unchanged.
Here, then, is a summary of what each set of numbers won for all the Lotto 6/49 draws in 2023. Unsurprisingly, I did not repeat this experiment for Christmas 2023. Summer Sausage and Maple Syrup is a much more rewarding gift.
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