This past little while, I have been polishing up a three-act theatre play of mine which has not (yet) been produced. It’s called ‘Lottery Story’.
In thinking again about the play, I found myself running over many scenarios relating to the National Lottery. A number of these lottery-related sequences ended up in the finished play but what I’m about to describe did not.
I want to describe a way of cheating the National Lottery – well, actually it’s a way of cheating your friends via the National Lottery. First, though, I want to be perfectly clear about something. I’m not posting this so that you can go out and cheat your friends, truly I’m not. Rather, I’m posting it so that you, the friends, might see whether you are being cheated or not.
I thought up this cheat myself – I have rather a horrible mind in some ways. I'm sure others have thought of it too but I would never dream of doing it to anyone. You have to trust me on that, it is the truth.
Anyway, here’s what I dreamed up.
Form a Syndicate of your workmates. Every week, collect their contribution and play the National Lottery over each weekend using random numbers. You must play the Lottery for the Syndicate. Somebody else can look after the money part, that doesn’t matter. Every Monday morning, you pin up the Syndicate’s lottery ticket for all to see and inspect. It is the correct date and the amount spent on it matches the amount raised from the Syndicate.
But it is unlikely to be a winner, is it? Because you have conned your work mates haven’t you?
Yes. You have…
When you went to the Lottery Shop, you bought a random number ticket for the amount the Syndicate put in.
Then – what else did you do? That’s right, you bought another random ticket for the exact same value with your own money.
It’s Friday, work is over. You bring both tickets home and you check both of them after the weekend draw. Most times, you won’t win anything. But occasionally you will enjoy a small win, once in a while a slightly bigger one and, one day, well, who knows?
Whenever a ticket wins, you keep that one for yourself. On Monday morning you bring in the losing ticket and you nail it to the wall for all to inspect. Once in a blue moon, both tickets will win something. Then the Syndicate will enjoy the smaller of the two prizes. How very nice for them…
“Is that it?” you may ask, “Forking out all that money every week for such a long shot?”
Yes, that’s it. It’s a silly idea really. But here’s the thing – just make sure it’s not being done to you.
As I said at the front, I’m posting this so that you can insure that you are not being conned. It’s terribly easy to do. If you are a Syndicate member, make sure your ticket is on display in advance of the draw and that somebody has signed the back of it. That’s all it takes.
I used to buy the tickets for my little work-syndicate, until I described my scenario to them. Now I don’t. I’ve never done this to anyone. I’ve never assassinated anyone either but I can probably dream up a fairly neat way of doing it.
This has been a public service posting by your own in-house devious bastard...
... me.
