
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 24, 1990                   TAG: 9007240368
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

SURE WINNER?

GENE WITT of Roanoke had an idea. When the Virginia Lottery's Lotto jackpot reached $22 million last weekend, Witt asked his credit union to lend him $7 million to play the game.

His reasoning was that the chance of winning with any combination of the six Lotto numbers is 1 in 7 million. So if he bought a $1 ticket for every possible combination, he'd be sure to win.

He made his request at a credit union, not a savings and loan. So Witt, a service-station cashier, couldn't interest the institution in lending him the money.

It's just as well. The bigger the jackpot, the greater the number of entries - thus, the higher the chance of having to share the prize with others, as happened last week.

And there's a bigger problem. Suppose Witt could have found an outlet that had 7 million tickets to sell. Suppose he could take off from his job and do nothing but fill out Lotto tickets. Suppose he was so fast at filling in six-number combinations that he could complete one ticket - different from each one before and after it - every five seconds.

He'd still have been at it when the winning combo was announced last Saturday night. In fact, at the rate of one ticket per five seconds, he'd be at it 24 hours a day for longer than a year.

But nice try, Gene. Such ingenuity might serve humanity more if it were directed toward ends other than winning the Lotto. Lotteries, after all, aren't designed to separate geniuses from their money.

by CNB