Fourteen, 18, 30, 36, 40 and 42, with an extra one, were the numbers that won one lucky punter a record Mark Six payout of HK$193,762,620 in February last year. Who was that newly minted millionaire? It is likely that only they and their many new best friends will ever know, the Hong Kong Jockey Club having strict privacy policies to protect lottery winners from public scrutiny.

Half a century earlier, in 1975, the government had founded the Lotteries Board to conduct licensed lotteries in Hong Kong, in large part to put an end to che fa, a deeply entrenched illegal street version that had plagued the city since the 1870s. That same year, the board appointed the Jockey Club as operator, and a six-out-of-14 numbers game, known as Dor Chung Choy (“multiple lucky colours”) in Chinese, was launched, the six chosen numbers having to match the sequence they were drawn in to win the first prize.

Tweaks were made and the following year, the Mark Six was relaunched as a six-out-of-36 game. It would evolve further over the decades into the format we know and often can’t resist today, the six-out-of-49 numbers game having been introduced in 2002.

Over the years, South China Morning Post photographers have caught some of this obsession on film, as the thrice-weekly draw inexorably rolls around, like a cage full of numbered balls.