Win the lottery. It is the dream of many people who regularly practice gambling. The number of French players is thus estimated at more than 26 million for scratching and drawing.
Among them, the winners are rare, but some were lucky enough to win a large sum, which could represent a real boost in their lives. This is the case of Hugo, a young man of 25 who received, a few years ago, the exceptional sum of 50,000 euros thanks to a simple scratch ticket at 3 euros.
It all starts on a morning like any other. While he is at work, Hugo takes advantage of his morning break to go, like every day, to his tobacconist, where he buys a scratch ticket. “Sometimes I won 10, 20 or even 50 euros. Good news like that in the morning, it brightens up the whole day,” he says.
But that day, it was not a small sum that Hugo won. He scratches his ticket, a “Quitte ou double” worth 3 euros. When he checks his winnings, he thinks he is dreaming. “I couldn’t believe it. I counted at least ten times to make sure how many zeros there were. I couldn’t tell if I had won 5,000 euros or 50,000 euros. “
The young man, brain turned by this news, then carefully puts the ticket in his pocket, and regularly checks its presence. “The fear of losing the ticket is immense. I had to check regularly that it was still in my pocket. I don’t think I would have forgiven myself if I had lost it.”
Once his day’s work is over, Hugo goes home and checks, several more times, that he hasn’t made a mistake in his results.
After making an appointment with the Française des Jeux and getting his money back, Hugo finally realizes that he has really won 50,000 euros and that they are now in his bank account. “What’s quite funny is that I immediately received a call from my banker who, after asking me where such a sum came from, warmly congratulated me. She was almost even happier than me !” he recalls.
Once the shock is over, Hugo faces questions: how to use this money? Who should I reveal the truth to?” I made the choice to hide my gain from most of my relatives. I considered this information not useful to all people who were not directly concerned. Only my close family, my parents and my brothers, know the truth because I sent them 5,000 euros each,” says the young man.
While he shared some of his winnings with his family, Hugo decided to keep the rest for himself, and he knew exactly what he was going to spend those pennies on. “You could say that this money fell just in time because, at that time, I was in the process of creating my business. useful. I had a 1 in 3 million chance of winning, and it couldn’t have come at a better time”, explains the Parisian.
Since this happy event, one might think that Hugo has stopped playing, but it is actually quite the opposite. “Winning a scratch ticket is an exceptional experience because it made me realize that it doesn’t just happen to others. The negative side is that it made me want to keep playing even more because I still hope, deep down, that it will happen again.”
