Why Playing The ‘Lost’ Lottery Numbers Is Actually Really Dumb

Lost lottery numbersFans of TV series ‘Lost’ were thrilled to find 4 of the 6 ‘Lost’ lottery numbers came up on the US Mega Millions (4th January).

Enthusiastic ‘Lost’ fans who played the numbers collected $150 each.

The ‘Lost’ numbers are a set of numbers made significant by cropping up in various guises throughout the series. But most significantly appearing in an episode called ‘Numbers’ in the 1st season of the show back in 2005. The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 win a jackpot in a flashback sequence for character Hugo “Hurley” Reyes.

Now the problem is that ‘Lost’ was hugely popular. That one episode alone was seen when broadcast by 18.8 million people in the US alone.

Has Anyone Ever Won The Lottery Using The Numbers From Lost?

So it should come as no real surprise to find more than 25,587 people won the $150 prize in that draw on 4th January.

Now, not all of those people necessarily played the exact ‘Lost’ numbers. But given that a 3+1 match on Mega Millions typically pays out around 3,000 people – it seems extremely likely that this is what happened!

But why is playing the Lost numbers a bad idea?

Because if the ‘Lost’ numbers ever hit the jackpot, you can expect to be sharing the prize with around 20,000 other ‘lucky’ winners. People are very superstitious about their numbers and once they’ve chosen them will often stick to the same numbers for many years. So even though Lost is now an old show, thousands of people will still be playing those numbers!

On the other hand, those who didn’t choose their numbers from watching the same show as 10’s of millions of other people shared the winning jackpot of $380 Million… between the two of them!

Those playing the ‘Lost lottery numbers’ would be looking at a life changing sum of around $19,000 each instead, if those numbers come up.

So maybe time to change your numbers guys. 🙂

One Comment so far ↓

  • Tino

    On a related note, a few years ago, the second prize in Powerball was $200,000. Normally, there would be 4 to 5 winners of the second prize per draw.

    Then, in March of 2005, something weird happened. On one particular draw there were 110 winners. If this was random, it would be virtually impossible for something like this to happen. But it happened and lottery executives thought there might be fraud involved.

    But when winners started showing up to claim their prize, they found out what happened. They played numbers from a fortune cookie. The fortune cookie messages, of course, are mass produced; they’re not personalized at all.

    Sure, the people that played the fortune cookie numbers got lucky. But if the fortune cookie numbers matched all of the numbers and the Powerball jackpot was won, they would have been quite disappointed with the amount won.

Leave a Reply

Subscribe To Comments?

P.S. Did you get my Lottery Tips emails yet?