Friday the 13th woos Loto punters
Eight million will chance their arm that "unlucky" will be lucky for someone who wins €13 million jackpot
TWICE the usual number of players will be buying €2 tickets for the Loto and Super Loto today to mark Friday the 13th - unlucky for some, but someone could win the €13m top prize.
Loto organiser Française des Jeux says that each Friday 13th eight million compared to the usual four million take a chance. The "lucky" effect even spreads to the racecourse as PMU bets rise 10% each time.
It is a bonus for FDJ as there are three such Fridays this year - today, April 13 and July 13 - the maximum possible. The next such year is 2015.
And it comes after a record year in 2011 which saw FDJ ticket sales hit €11.4 billion - up 8.5% in a year as people punted on Loto, Super Loto, Euro Millions along with Cash, Millionnaire and 17 other scratchcards.
Believing that Friday 13th can be lucky is peculiar to French Loto players as no other country in Europe has a special high prize - and the prime example is the Euro Millions which covers nine countries and has made no change to its format. Tonight's jackpot is the rollover €28m.
FDJ has taken full advantage of the superstition and has erected a wooden board at the Opéra in Paris where passers-by can "touch wood" for luck. It is setting up a counter to find out just how many do so...
It can afford to indulge people's fantasies in the financial crisis: it has twice the number of sales points as La Poste.
* How to play: for a simple one-off Lucky Dip game you can ask at the FDJ sales point, often a tabac or a simple booth, for a "un flash à deux euros pour le Super Loto". That buys one game without having to score off numbers on a grid and choose a Chance number.
