From the first months since I
live in Faro, I noticed one interesting portuguese hobby, entertainment,
amusement, don’t know how exactly to call it, maybe addiction, but it suprised
me anyway. And what it is exactly? Their great thirst to buy scratch cards!
Every month I am going to these
small shops to recharge my phone card and every time I see a large lines with
people, who are buying these lottery scratch – off tickets. I have that strange
feeling that every time I am the only one, who don’t buy these cards. People are standing inside and outside with
these tickets, which ask to scratch off at least three different areas on the
card that could be hiding different
things such as numbers, shapes and symbols. I think these type of lottery are much more
addictive than having to buy an actual ticket lottery, because addiction is
primarly based on the fact that don’t have to wait long at all.
But I can not understand why it
is like that? Why are these cards so addictive to portuguese and others? Is there a really big possibility to win
several hundreds, thousands simply by scratching off the right areas? Are they really waiting for a luck or just
don’t have nothing to do? I can not understand... but there are always a lot of people in these shops – young, old, women, men...
In Latvia mosthly elderly people buy
scratch tickets, although a couple of times my family has also tried, but just to
try, but for us it was just a fun, and nowdays in my country it is not so
popular, but of course still we have „players”, but certainly not as many as
here. Maybe here is a bigger chance to win, I really don’t know, what is their
secret to play so often J
In fact until very recently the Portugueses only played Euromillion, Totoloto (another game that we have but it´s bigger prizes are smaller the the ones from euromillion) or Christmas lottery and only occasionally a scratch card, but now we are buying more scratch cards than a few months or years ago. I do not know the precise reason, but I think the consume has increased because of a new type of scracth card called “Pé de Meia” (its a name that we give to our savings), this scratch card “gives” to the players the opportunity of win a good amount of money during a few months or a year or two. I think that this new type of scratch card maked the portugueses addicted to this type of money games, made them hope to win some extra money that helps with their expenses only betting a small amount of money, that some times isn´t that small at all !!!
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