The winner chose to remain anonymous but it was revealed that she purchased her ticket from a lotto agency in the Victorian suburb of Chirnside Park. Talking to lottery officials after the win, she said: “I’m very excited! Thank you so much! I always watch the draw every night on TV and when I watched it last night, I was circling each number as it came up on the screen.
“I knew I had all the numbers as they were coming out. I play them every week. I always play hoping I’ll win some day and my favourite part is watching the draw. It’s so exciting!”
The winner also had firm plans in mind for the money. “I’m going to buy my house,” she said. “I’ve been renting here for 20 years and I never want to leave so I’m going to put an offer in and buy it. I love where I live and it’s a nice feeling knowing I won’t have to leave the area.”
Systems are a popular method of entry in Australia and allow players to enter many lines of closely-related numbers into the same draw. The way it works is simple: pick more than the standard six numbers (so seven or more) and then enter every valid combination of six numbers from that selection into the draw as an individual entry.
Monday’s winner played a System 8, so she picked eight numbers and entered every six-number combination within that range into the draw. That worked out at 28 lines in total. The biggest available system in Monday Lotto is a System 20, which would create nearly 40,000 individual lines! The only drawback is the cost, as you still have to pay for each individual line.
As the new millionaire from Victoria can attest to, however, the biggest benefit of a system is that if you win, you win big. Because all of her lines were created using the same set of eight numbers, all of them won some sort of prize. One line hit all six numbers to win the Monday Lotto jackpot of AU$1 million, while 12 other lines won a division three prize and 15 of them won division four prizes. The winner’s total prize money amounted to AU$1,006,218.85.
Monday and Wednesday Lotto is played across Australia and offers a jackpot of at least AU$1 million in every draw.
