National Lotto

It's not a fix, just that the chances of winning are pretty minimal.

The odds of winning the jackpot are, I believe, in the region of

14,000,000:1, so if you bought one ticket each week, you would need to play on average for about 270,000 years before winning.

and if you didnt buy the winning ticket on the week it comes up.....

if there are 14m different combinations and the rollover is 22m (and you have 14m to spare) you could just buy every combination and hope u win the lot (i.e dont have to share)

and if you didnt buy the winning ticket on the week it comes up.....

And hope that you could fill all the cards in in time !!

Strange to think that when the lottery was still a very small embryo a great deal of time was spent discussing the possibility that a group would try this and how it could (should) be stopped (why?). The paranoia that this was a real problem was so bad, that for some time it was considered to be a valid reason for not actully having a lottery at all.

Of course, in the real world, the chance of being the only winner is small enough that no-one would sensibly try it as a way of making a profit. However, if you have 26.5 million pounds to launder you might be so inclined :-).

tim

You do seem to have been rather unlucky (so far).

Although I would have "won" more money by not doing the Lottery, I would estimate that I have won at least 50 p.a. since its inception.

Thats taking a real chance though. Psychology really enters into this, as some numbers are more popular than others. That accounted for the higher than expected number of rollovers when the lottery first started. For instance I remember reading that over 10,000 people chose 1,2,3,4,5,6 every week. So fancy spending 14 million and splitting 22 million with 10,000 other people?

The introduction of lucky dips has evened this out to some extent, as they do not favour certain numbers in the way people do.

There were a lot of lottery related threads on this group in the early days of the lottery. I'm sure they would still be available on google groups.

Neb

I used to buy quick a few Lotto lines.

Now I stick to one line for myself and have one line in a work syndicate. The rest of the money I used to spend on it goes on premium bonds.

I know the chances of winning a big prize there is also remote - but at least you can have your money back.

sarah

...the jackpot. You'd expect to have won a lot of smaller prizes before then.

You often hear people claiming it's a fix. Sadly though no-one has managed to explain precisely how it's fixed, and to who's advantage.

Interestingly, some years after the lottery had been running the rules were changed a little such that Camelot no longer have to pay out all £10 prizes - they can pay less or nothing at all. They may even have made similar changes to the rules regarding other prizes.

It depends what he means by on and off. On average luck you would win about one prize a year doing a line every week. So in the ten years the lottery has been running he would have won 100 with average luck. If on and off means he only plays one week out of two, then his luck is just about average. Remember very few people will have average luck, most of them will be better or worse. So even spending 1 every week 5 prizes of a tenner are worse than you would want, but not remarkably so.

Neb

I think they can only refuse to payout in very clear circumstances. There are theoretical circumstances where Camelot would not be able to pay all the tenners if an unusually large amount of people won. Initially they had to carry this risk themselves, but then the rules were changed so they can refuse to pay if they don't have the resources in the prize fund to do so. All the other prizes are variable depending on the size of the prize fund. So the same problem does not affect them.

Neb