Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 28/05) - Lottery fever struck Yellowknife Wednesday as gamblers lined up for a shot at the largest jackpot in Canadian history.

Wednesday's Lotto 6/49 prize was touted at $40 million, but due to high ticket sales, the actual jackpot was upped to $54 million.

Lottery players in the NWT have twice won 6/49 tickets worth more than $1 million since 1982. The most frequently drawn number in Lotto 6/49 since the lottery began is 31. The number that's come up least often is 15. The balls used in the draw are made of india rubber and are checked regularly. If any one ball differs from the required parameters, all 49 balls are replaced.

Unfortunately, some ticket buyers had to wait longer than usual when the online system that issues tickets crashed more than once.

Kathleen Polyak, spokesperson for the Western Canada Lottery Corporation, said each outage was less than 15 minutes long, and the total time tickets were unavailable was about half an hour.

Polyak didn't know yet why the system had crashed, but said it doesn't happen often. The system was back online by noon.

"We apologize to any customers who were inconvenienced," she said.

The outages affected lottery kiosks in the NWT, Yukon, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The winning numbers were 5, 11, 20, 30, 37, and 43, and the bonus number was 31. The winning ticket was sold in Camrose, about 90 km southeast of Edmonton.

Wednesday afternoon there were lineups at Yellowknife lottery booths as people rushed to get tickets before the deadline of 7 p.m.

Della Dowbush waited about 10 minutes in line at Extra Foods to buy tickets for herself and a friend. Like many people, she only buys lottery tickets when there's a big prize at stake.

She wasn't sure what her odds for winning were, but she doubled them by buying two tickets.

The official odds of winning the jackpot were one in 13,983,816.

The lineup was shorter at the lotto kiosk in Centre Square Mall, and was made up mostly of habitual lottery players.

Buujay Lee offered to split the jackpot with a reporter if he won. The 6/49 was his favourite lottery because it allows gamblers to select their own numbers.

"You use the seven numbers to write a poem," he said.

Lee's numbers came up in January, but he hadn't played that week. Otherwise he would have shared in the $16 million prize.

Rob Gowryluk bought $40 worth of tickets for his office pool at MicroAge where the four employees play the lottery every week.

Had their numbers come up, Gowryluk joked the business might take a few days off "for inventory."

Polyak said ticket sales always spike when there's a record-breaking jackpot. Nationally, gamblers bought more than $54 million worth of tickets for last Saturday's draw worth $30 million.

But the real winner in the NWT is Sport North. Proceeds from lottery tickets sold in the Territories go to the organization that funds athletic programs.