Jakarta –
Hundreds of people in the Philippines have won the first prize in the Grand Lotto, with a total prize pool of 236 million pesos or approximately Rp 61 billion.
The number of winners was 433, the highest number in the history of the lottery in the country.
Lottery participants must choose six numbers, from one to 55. To win the prize, the six numbers selected must match the six numbers drawn by the operator.
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The six numbers that come up are 9, 18, 27, 36, 45 and 54, which are multiples of nine.
A winner in Mandaluyong, near the capital Manila, said: “For years I have always put in multiples of nine, eight, seven and six. I’m sure happy to finally win.”
Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the BBC that lotteries with multiple numbers of a certain number were rare.
“But there are hundreds of lotteries all over the world every day. Statistically it is not surprising that once every few decades there are winning numbers that show a certain pattern (a pattern of multiples of numbers),” Tao said.
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The large number of Grand Lotto lottery winners led a lawmaker to call for an investigation.
The legislator, Koko Pimentel, defined the figures declared “suspicious”.
“This lottery is authorized by the state. Therefore, we must maintain and protect the integrity of this lottery,” said Pimentel.
However, Melquiades Robles, manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), assured that the lottery numbers that came out were “impossible to fake”.
PCSO also said that people in the Philippines tend to put numbers in sequential order.
“Many are constantly installing the same numbers. Loyalty is not just for husband or wife, but also for lottery numbers,” Robles said in a press release.
This isn’t the first time lottery drawing numbers show specific patterns like it happened in the Philippines.
In December 2020, 20 people in South Africa won the lottery after placing numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Each winner received a cash prize of R5.7 million.
In March 2016, over 4,000 people in the UK managed to match five of the six numbers drawn, all multiples of seven. But each cash prize is “only” £ 15 or around Rp. 260,000.
Meanwhile, Spanish television journalist RTVE, Natalia Escudero, announced in a live broadcast that she would quit her job after missing a € 4 million lottery win.
It turned out that he only won € 5,000, or around Rp 75 million.
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