what, no mention of the 120m euro lottery, next week?

What more do you need to know than the odds against winning the jackpot

- more than 76 million to 1...

Put another way, that's the same chance as randomly choosing a single second between midnight tonight (November 13th 2006) and 7:36pm on April 14th 2009.

By all means let's spend our £1.50, but only for the fleeting frisson of checking the numbers the day after rather than in any real expectation of winning :(

"Nick Fisher" wrote

True, but that means that you only (!) need to spend 114,413,040 GBP to "cover all the bases" and guarantee a share of the jackpot payout. If you were the only jackpot winner - and let's say it was exactly 120M - then you'd make a profit of 5,586,960 GBP before you'd even added-in all the smaller prizes...

I heard that you should not buy a ticket before 6:30 on the night of the draw. If you do you have more chance of dropping dead before the draw than of winning it.

And I'm sure I've read reports of gambling syndicates doing just that in the past when rollovers have swollen the pot.

Bit of a high-risk strategy though - it only takes 1 other jackpot winner and your £5m profit becomes a £54m loss. OUCH !!! Furthermore, I'm not sure if the rules don't prevent you from claiming anything but the most valuable winning line on a given ticket...

FWIW, you'd be better buying the tickets in the Eurozone, as they are EUR 2.00 each there, an assumed exchange rate of 1.333 to the GBP. The full suite of tickets would therefore cost you EUR 152,550,720 which according to

Happy gambling !

Nick

"rob" wrote

That's probably about right for buying *one* line in the *National* Lottery, for someone in their *thirties*.

For Euromillions, it would be more like just ten minutes before the draw... [Or twenty minutes if you buy two lines, etc]

"Nick Fisher" wrote

Try adding-in the smaller prizes (which should total around 45-50 M ). That makes it:- "1 other jackpot winner and your 50-55 M profit becomes a 5-10 M loss"

Not so bad now, is it? ;-)

"Nick Fisher" wrote

I can't believe that, but if it is true, then there's a very easy way around it, isn't there?!

"Nick Fisher" wrote

Yes, but if you win the Jackpot on a "Euro" ticket.then it wouldn't be worth 120 M ...

Tim,

I was going to write an "aha, but..!" response. When I looked at the figures however, I was rather surprised

Not only is the implied exchage rate of the prize values significantly lower (about 1.29 EUR to the GBP), but the return is lower for Eurozone players as well.

For example, in the UK last week, a single ticket could have made the following returns:

Type Prize Return Match 2 + 1 6.60 4.40/1 Match 1 + 2 9.80 6.53/1 Match 3 + 0 14.20 9.47/1

whereas in the Eurozone, the figures looked like this:

Type Prize Return Match 2 + 1 8.50 4.25/1 Match 1 + 2 12.70 6.35/1 Match 3 + 0 18.30 9.15/1

So I take it all back !!! Might as well buy the tickets and take the winnings in sterling..:>

Nick