DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708280533

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   59 lines

MULTIPLE LOTTO WINNERS MAY NOT BE HAPPY ONES

It's the incredible, shrinking jackpot.

Some people drooling over Wednesday night's $26 million Virginia Lottery jackpot may be sorely disappointed if they find out this morning that they actually won. Why? Because they'll be sharing it with a few hundred of the closest friends they never met.

They are the sequencers.

While most of the 7.1 million possible six-digit numerical combinations in Lotto are played only once or twice, if at all, there are a few special sequences Lotto players just love. They play them week after week.

For instance, the most heavily played numbers in Virginia on Wednesday afternoon were based on multiples of 7: 7-14-21-28-35-42. That combination had been played 1,254 times as of late Wednesday afternoon.

If that number were to win, however, the prize would be split evenly among all ticket holders.

With a $26 million jackpot, that's about $884,000 annually after taxes. Spilt 1,254 times, it shrinks to a mere $705 a year, or about $14,000 over 20 years.

Trouble is, a prize that small triggers a little-known Lotto rule.

Normally the actual amount of cash on hand when a drawing is held is about half of what the projected grand prize is. If there is a winner, the state invests that cash in interest-bearing annuities, doubling the total value as it is paid out over two decades.

That's the way it's gone with every jackpot prize thus far paid in Virginia.

``If there are multiple winners, however, and the individual prizes would be less than $100,001 a year, then an annuity would not be purchased,'' said Ed Scarborough, a Lottery Department spokesman. ``We would take the cash on hand and pay that out as a one-time prize.''

Thus, $13 million divided among 1,254 winning tickets becomes about $10,366. Take out taxes and it slips further, to about $7,000 each.

So it goes with the other top sequences being played in Virginia:

2nd place - 1-2-3-4-5-6, played by 911 people, and worth a lump sum of about $9,700.

3rd place - 5-10-15-20-25-30, played 763 times and worth about $11,500.

4th place - 3-6-9-12-15-18, played 569 times and worth about $15,500.

The fifth most played number in Virginia this week is something of an oddity, however. It's not a traditional numerical sequence; rather, it's a number that was included on a lottery ticket pictured on the front of Monday's Virginian-Pilot.

That sequence, 10-14-20-21-25-33, had been played 207 times by Tuesday and was up to 432 by Wednesday afternoon. If it were to win, the lump sum payment would be about $20,000.

The odds of any sequence winning, even 1 through 6, are no better or worse than for any other combination. But how many players can there safely be for a single numerical combination to preserve a 20-year payout? For a $26 million jackpot, no more than eight.

Thus, the Lottery Department has a message for folks using popular sequences or using the numbers out of the newspaper: Quit it.

``Stop playing those numbers!'' Scarborough said. ``If it hits, we're not going to have very much money going to each player.''

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