Lottery Triple Rollover
The UK National lottery jackpot for Saturday 14 October is expected
to be worth around £20 million, thanks to a triple rollover.
There has only even been one previous triple rollover (which means
the three previous draws failed to provide any player with the six
numbers required for a jackpot) and that was on 29 May 2004. The
jackpot pool then was £22,158,516, and it was shared by six
winners, each taking home just over £3.6 million. The winning
numbers then were 1-4-6-18-19-40.
However, large jackpots aren't always shared by multiple winners.
On 14 July 2004, the jackpot prize pool of £20,100,472 was
won by a single winner, Iris Jeffrey from Northern Ireland. One
winner also scooped a hefty £18,268,465 just over a year later,
on 23 July 2005. And there have been several superdraws creating
double-digit millionaires even when the total prize pool has been
shared. For example, in January 2006 three winners shared £42,008,610,
giving them around £14 million each.
Clearly, a triple rollover is something special, and there will
be millions of people this weekend all dreaming of landing a £20,000,000
win. But what would anyone do with such a fortune? If you happen
to get lucky and are scratching around for ideas, here are a few
of our own:
* Rent the Disneyworld theme park in Orlando for the day. Michael
Jackson did it, so why can't you? Just think, no queues, no FastPass
tickets, and not a single back-pack in sight - just immediate Disney
gratification whenever you want it.
* Buy an executive jet. You could get a Lear jet for around a quarter
of your win, or a helicopter for slightly more. Even better, it
would only cost a relatively trifling amount to learn to actually
pilot the beast.
* Get yourself a new home in every country in Europe. This is the
perfect idea for those of you who want to make the most of your
EU citizenship. You could also buy a Euromillions ticket in each
country for the sake of posterity.
* Buy a thoroughbred racehorse. Actually, with £20 million
in the bank you could buy several. Just be sure to leave enough
left over for their upkeep and hiring a decent jockey.
* Pay Christina Aguilera (or any other celebrity that takes your
fancy) as much as it takes for a private audience. Not everyone
has a price, but most do, and £20 million should be enough
to give you a fighting chance.
Ticket sales invariably increase when there is a rollover, and
so a triple rollover should send figures through the roof this weekend.
It could simply be that a higher jackpot attracts more players,
but the fact is that higher jackpots also make the lottery better
value for money. Your chances of winning are around 1 in 14 million,
so if the prize is £20 million, you're getting ten times as
much value for your £1 than if it was just £2 million.
The odds of you winning don't change, of course, but if it happens
you'll be a lot richer playing a rollover than a regular game.
The UK National Lottery doesn't allow for more than three consecutive
rollovers, so if the jackpot isn't won on Saturday, the prize will
be allocated to the players who get five numbers plus the bonus
ball. If there are no players with five numbers plus the bonus,
the money drops down to the winners of just five numbers, and so
on. This means that this weekend's enormous jackpot will be shared
equally between the players with the best lines, no matter what
happens.
If that doesn't make Saturday's draw worth entering, we don't know
what would!
12 October 2006
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