The Lottery Fascinates Me

There is a frankly massive Euromillions jackpot of £68,000,000 that looks like it might be won tonight.

I never used to understand the allure of the lottery. Yeah so there are big prizes, but there are even bigger odds. Huge odds. ENORMOUS odds! I remember working out in one maths lesson way back when I was at school that the odds of winning the 'normal' UK lottery are one in fourteen million. One in fourteen MILLION. Then there is the Euromillions, for which the odds for winning the maximum stake are one in SEVENTY SIX MILLION... but the jackpot is far greater. Understanding just how infinitesimally small those odds are is pretty much on par with trying to understand just how much money is on the table. It's just too much to comprehend.

So for a while I was dismissive of anyone who played the lottery. I mean, it's just a tax on people who can't do maths, isn't it? Slowly I realised the flaw to that logic: you gotta be in it to win it.

It wasn't until I played the lottery that I realised just how enjoyable it is to spend the winnings in your head. I have spent can spend endless hours endless hours thinking about whether or not I would buy a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin or maybe even an Audi R8. Through so much indecision I have come up with a cunning plan as to how I would decide which supercar to buy. What I'd do is invite a salesperson from each of the big names to bring a car to my brand new track (because let's face it, you can't have an amazing car without anywhere to drive it properly, can you?). They would all be invited on the same day and in the knowledge that their competitors will be there too, but with the promise that I will buy one of their cars. I'd then enjoy a day sampling the finest motorcar engineering the world has to offer, whilst taking much pleasure in pitting the salespeople against each other. I haven't thought about this much. Nope, not at all.

But then I played it once or twice. That was it, I began to be inexorably lured towards buying another ticket. I don't play with any sense of regularity, but the temptation of a rollover is often enough to convince me to put my pound coin or few where my mouth is.

So yeah, the lottery fascinates me. I imagine that it will continue to fascinate me for some time. I like trying to stretch my brain to understand the sheer scale of odds and the possible but just that little bit too far out of reach reward. Most of all I like thinking about how I would spend the money if I were to win it.