On the previous page, I embarked upon an experiment, in which every effort will be made to impart luck to a couple of lottery tickets.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, I collected all the 'lucky finds' of coins I came across, ending up with £2.01.

So here starts the next phase of the project - getting the tickets and playing them...

Picking The Numbers

I used a six-sided die to pick 6 numbers between 1 and 49, as follows:
1. First roll (subtracting 1 and discarding rolls of 6) determines the first digit (0 to 4 inclusive)
2. Second roll (subtracting 1 and discarding rolls of 6) yields a number 0 to 4 inclusive
3. If third roll is even, add 5 to number from step 2 to yield the second digit
4. If the result is '00', discard and try again

The Ticket

I'm not going to divulge the six numbers I picked just yet (in case I have to share the jackpot with a dozen people who read this page and thought they'd ride the wave with me - sorry), but I spent one pound on a lotto ticket for next Saturday's draw.

The other pound was spent on an instant-win scratch card, leaving one lucky penny in the jar to scratch off the surface to reveal...

A Win!

That's right! - I actually won something:

Three of anything to win it - so I won two pounds! - whatever happens now, I've at least broken even. Actually, better than that, because the initial stake money wasn't mine to begin with.

Two pounds... I won't let it change me.

Waiting For Saturday

I waited patiently until Saturday to see if the lotto draw ticket would be similarly (or more) lucky...

The Draw

OK, so here are my numbers - 3, 5, 9, 24, 41 and 49...

And here are the results of the draw - 6, 14, 32, 35, 41, 42 and 43.

One number matched - no win.

Conclusion

I can't pretend to be very surprised about this - just to recap - I have still come out of this exercise two pounds better off than when I went in, but here's the really interesting bit: that would also have been the case if I had not played the lottery at all.

Hard work and diligence brought me a few pennies. Luck did nothing spectacular. Oh well.