After the impressive success of the computerized lottery, executives at the TaipeiBank's lottery department yesterday sought to shift the spotlight to another numbers game that also began last month.
That lottery -- coined the traditional lottery (
Unlike the computerized lottery and scratch-to-win lottery, the traditional lottery drawing is held just six times a year on major holidays.
The next one will be for the Chinese New Year, with the other five issues scheduled to be drawn on the Women and Children's Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Chinese Valentine's Day, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and New Year's Day, according to the TaipeiBank.
There are six consecutive numbers on each pre-printed ticket from 000000 to 999999, cost at NT$100. Authorized vendors include computerized lottery and street-side vendors. Matching from last one to all six numbers wins. If you hit all six numbers, the grand prize is NT$10 million. If you match the last five numbers, which is the second prize, you win NT$500,000. If you match last four and three numbers, the prize will be NT$50,000 and NT$10,000 respectively. In addition, if you match first three numbers, you will win a prize of NT$10,000. If you match the last two and one numbers, the prizes are NT$1,000 and NT$200 respectively.
"The odds of hitting the NT$10 million is 1 million to one," Ding said.
The traditional lottery has a design similar to the Patriotism Lottery (愛國獎券) issued in the 1960s and 1970s. A total of 1,171 issues were sold during the recent period, with a total sales of NT$68.9 billion, according to TaipeiBank. A portion of the revenue was contributed to military personnel.
TaipeiBank will draw the winning numbers for the traditional lottery and the computerized lottery at the same time; 7:55pm, this Friday. The next issue will be drawn in early April.
Unlike the computerized lottery, the winner of the traditional lottery does not have to share the grand prize with others, since there is only one unique number in each group. A maximum of six groups, one million tickets in each group, could be sold on every issue, depends on the sales volume.
Chai pointed a recent trend in the sales of computerized lottery which could explain the buying frenzy right before drawing day.
"We found out that the sales on computerized lottery tickets on Monday has been about the total of tickets sold on Saturday and Sunday. In addition, the sales on Tuesday is about the same as the total sales on the three previous days from Saturday to Monday," Chai said.
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