Fancy a gamble?

SOME 10 days ago, I joined a long line of Singaporeans in a Singapore Pools outlet in an annual gambling ritual, the Toto Hongbao Draw.

It's a donation to charity, I tell myself. I know my chances of winning anything are as good as zero. In all my years of sporadically buying lottery tickets, I have never won a single cent. And indeed, I di dn't.

Moreover, statistical calculations tell me that ever since the Toto system was changed in 2014 from choosing six digits from a pool of 45 numbers to choosing six digits from a pool of 49 numbers, punters have been getting a poorer deal out of the money they commit to every draw.

Not that it matters. There lies within us a desire to earn a lot of money thr…