"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; the truth isn't." This age-old saying may well explain the phenomenon of a record 433 bettors bagging the P236-million jackpot price for the Grand Lotto 6/55 draw on Saturday evening.
While the truth is what it is, no matter how implausible or improbable, it doesn't mean it would not benefit from some explanations amid suspicions that the lotto draw had been rigged. One rigged lotto draw, if proven, of course, would cast a shadow of doubt on every winner of past draws since day one.
Thus, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, the government agency behind the lotto draws, came out with a full-on charm offensive to vouch for the integrity of its draws. This is against the backdrop that it's easier for someone to get hit by lightning than to bag the lotto jackpot.
That's true; that's not debatable.
Scientists say that the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are less than one in a million while winning the 6/56 lotto draw is many times over that because there are nearly 29 million possible winning combinations.
In effect, not only did 433 bettors choose the winning six digits, but their choice combination — all six numbers being multipliers of number 9 — was also drawn, as if by magic. It's as if all the forces of the universe aligned to put forth something which a retired bank president exclaimed as "Something for Ripley's Believe It Or Not!"
At least a couple of senators said they would call for a congressional investigation on the matter. Ho-hum! Retired senator Ping Lacson, on the other hand, said that if he's the one investigating, he'd try to see what common denominators the 433 have.
We'll start the ball rolling for Ping. We'd bet that all of the winning bettors share the bittersweet feeling of bagging the lotto jackpot but having to split evenly the P236-million pot for a take-home of P545,245 each minus a final tax of 20 percent.
Half a million pesos is nothing to scoff at but the sum is certainly paltry compared to winning P236 million. And those 433 winners may kiss goodbye any hopes of winning the jackpot again because that would bring into play another nearly insurmountable probability — that of one person bagging the lotto jackpot twice.
Winning again for those 433 bettors elicited at the newsroom a quip that they better not be greedy because they're not the only sons and daughters of God who also deserve windfalls.
Likewise, as explained by Dr. Jomar Rabajante, a Mathematics lecturer at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Physics at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños, the 433 sharing the pot comes with the territory of making "alaga" of the same multiplier.
At the office, we have Mr. LP who always has a side bet of six digits with a common multiplier of six from the birth date of his father 6 June, 1936. So, if the 6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36 combination is drawn one day, you'd know that this paper would sooner than later lose one hard worker.
And our Mr. LP may not have as many as 422 other persons to share his winnings because unlike Lucky 9, the number 6 is not known to be favored by the heavens. In fact, a string of three sixes is said to be the mark of the one who had been cast into the bottomless pit.
Having 433 lotto jackpot winners is very much plausible and certainly not impossible, as nothing is impossible, precisely because of the very popular multiplier chosen by them.
Lucky 9, indeed.