A group of 24 friends from Espírito Santo won R$ 173 million in the +Milionária lottery with a repeated bet.

A group of 24 friends from Santa Maria de Jetibá, in the mountainous region of Espírito Santo, claimed the amounts corresponding to the two prizes from the +Milionária lottery. The information was released by Caixa Econômica Federal this Tuesday (14). The draw that guaranteed approximately R$ 173 million to the group took place last Saturday (11).

The case drew attention because one of the members of the lottery pool lost their initial ticket and decided to redo the game with the same number sequence at the same lottery outlet. This resulted in the group receiving double the prize money.

Each winning bet won over R$ 86 million. This feat can be considered rare, since the chance of it happening with that type of bet – 8 numbers + 3 clovers – is 1 in almost 3 million. The bettors had to spend R$ 504 on each bet, the equivalent of 84 bets.

Odilon Rampasso, a mathematics teacher at Sesi, did the calculations and joked: "It's easier for lightning to strike someone's head than to win the +Millionaire lottery, since the probability of lightning striking is approximately 1 in 1,2 million." According to him, if the bet were simple and common (6 numbers + 2 clovers), costing R$ 6, the chance would be 1 in 238 million, almost five times more difficult than winning the Mega-Sena lottery.

The division of the total prize among the 24 participants will guarantee approximately R$ 7 million for each member. The winning numbers were 04, 21, 29, 33, 39, and 42, with the two numbers 1 and 4. This was only the second time in history that someone has won the main prize in the +Milionária lottery – the first time was in July of last year, when a single ticket won R$ 249 million in Manaus, Amazonas. The +Milionária lottery was launched in May 2022.

Tiago Rossi, owner of the lottery shop where the bets were registered, commented on the impact of the result in the city. “People in the city are very excited, everyone wants to bet, wants to increase their chances. We already had two Lotofácil winners about two and a half years ago, but a prize like this was a first,” said the owner of the establishment.

Maria Luzia Fernandes, president of the Lottery Syndicate of Espírito Santo, explained that the +Milionária game presents a high degree of difficulty for bettors. The game requires the participant to correctly guess six numbers in the first layer and a specific combination of two numbers in the second layer.
"It's a very difficult game to win. I usually say that people from Espírito Santo are very lucky," said Maria Luzia about the victory of the residents of Santa Maria de Jetibá.

The news of the prize increased activity at lottery outlets in the city of Espírito Santo. Many residents sought out the establishments to place their bets after the winners were announced. Six other bets from the same municipality in Espírito Santo, and two others from Vila Velha and São Domingos do Norte, came close but won prizes ranging from R$ 170 to R$ 2.909,28.

According to Professor Rampasso, the best way to increase the chances of winning this Caixa lottery is by increasing the bet amount. In the +Milionária lottery, two separate draws are held in each contest, using two globes. For the drawing of the six numbers, one globe is loaded with 50 balls numbered from 1 to 50, and another globe is loaded with six balls numbered from 1 to 6, for the drawing of the two clovers.