Lady luck

My friend Cam and I tried something neither of us had ever done before, we played the lotto. Now, I've bet on the lottery in the US before, it's relatively straight forward, either choose numbers or have the machine do it for you; the other option is a scratch card, typically get three of the same numbers or prizes and that's the prize you win for that card. The local lottery, however, seemed to be a bit more complicated and I had never attempted it. Cam and I figured we'd test our luck for fun, after having a nice long massage over the holidays.

We went to a Lotto office, and saw the long lines and people filling out cards. We hadn't been sure of the choices, but one of Cam's masseuses told us how to play the easiest option, EZ2: choose two numbers and bet P10. She said that December 29 was the festival day of her town, so she asked us to bet 12-29 for her. We got an EZ2 card and started reading the directions. Boy, they sure make the rules a lot more complicated than it seems! We had to read it a few times, ask help from one fellow standing in line and even got directions from the ladies tending to the bets. Yikes!

We filled out an EZ2 card, bet P20, one for the masseuse and one for ourselves. Then we figured we'd go all out and try the Power Lotto! The big daddy of the lottery, if you get all 5 numbers plus another lucky number right, you win P50million! We definitely got a bit confused about that one, had to void a couple of the panels since we thought we were supposed to choose 6 numbers. And then we forgot to choose a lucky number and the ladies had to tell us to choose them before paying. Since the Power Lotto is a bigger pot, we had to pay more for it too. Two sets of numbers cost us P100 or P50 for each bet. Our total layout - P120.

The EZ2 is staged everyday, actually I discovered there's a 2 pm draw and a 9 pm draw! Wow, that's a lot of betting going on, and all for a pot of P4000. The Power Lotto is only drawn every Tuesday, but there are some variable lottos drawn on a daily basis (some require 4 numbers, some 6 numbers, a whoozy choice). Anyway, as of tonight, none of the bets we made came up as the winning set. It was an interesting experience and not too expensive, but I'm not going to be standing in line everyday to bet a tenner or a fifty once a week to try my luck.