Southsider’s scratch card birthday treat

A SOFTWARE engineer from Dublin, who admitted to never watching Winning Streak in his life before he got on the National Lottery TV game show, has won a cool €59,000.

Robert Smyth (35), from Aylesbury in Dublin 24, was as surprised as anybody to hear his name called out to appear on Winning Streak after he confessed that he rarely buys a ticket or even watches the hit RTÉ One show.

The Southsider spent a lot of time viewing previous Winning Streak episodes on the RTÉ Player so he knew what to expect when he sat in the contestant’s chair on Saturday evening.

Robert has his mother in-law, Rose, to thank for his appearance, as she had gifted him a scratch card for his recent 35th birthday, which led to him sending the lucky three-star entry which got him on the show.

Robert has been married to wife, Triona for the past five years and they have two children, Sean (4) and Saorlaith (2.)

He was joined in the Winning Streak studio with all of his family which included his dad, Sean, mother, Marie, sister, Carol and some of his aunts, uncles and cousins.

Robert works as a Software Engineer, specialising in fraud prevention for Mastercard in Dublin.

In his spare time, Robert likes to run marathons and is in the process of training for the Dublin City Marathon this month.

To celebrate his win, Robert ran a half marathon up the Dublin Mountains the Sunday morning after the show.

While he has no firm plans for his impressive haul, Robert will treat his family with his Winning Streak windfall.

The National Lottery Winning Streak game show is co-presented by Marty Whelan and Sinead Kennedy and features some perennial favourite games including Play or Pay, Roll for Riches, WinFall and Electric Dream – where one player will win an electric car worth €25,000.

As ever, one of the lucky five players get the chance to spin the wheel and win up to €500,000.

An exciting element of the show is that one €100,000 segment will be added to the Grand Prize Wheel every show if less than that amount was won in the previous show, improving players chances to win a massive prize.

A brand new-look Winning Streak scratch card is available in the 5,900 National Lottery retailers all over the country.

As well as appearing on the Winning Streak TV game show players are also in with a chance to win some great cash prizes up to €5,000. The odds for those who purchase a Winning Streak to win is 1 in 1.86.