Better to miss the jackpot

You would not have known it at the time, but if you had already matched the first five numbers that had fallen out of the lottery machine on the evening of Wednesday 30th August, you should have been hoping that the next ball was not on your ticket. instead, you should have been hoping the bonus ball was your sixth selection. Why? Well, the jackpot prize fund is shared between all the ticket holders who match the six main numbers. On that particular evening, four ticket holders did exactly that and shared the total fund of £2,676,876, giving them 'just' £669,219 each. But the prize value for matching five numbers and the bonus ball was £823,654 - that's £154,000 more than the jackpot! There was only the one winner of the match-5 plus bonus who must be thanking their lucky stars that they chose the number 45 which was the last ball to come out of the Topaz machine.

- 31/8/06