increasing the chances of winning at the lottery

danster

hi all,
ive decided to start playing the lottery. does anyone know if i have more chance of winning at the scratch cards, on the wednesday lottery game or the saturday one. ild rather higher odds at winning smaller amounts of money than smaller odds winning bigger amounts of money. does anyone know of a list which lists all the games with the odds on winning? ive decided to use the lotterys website to do all this as i can just play without having to watch it on tv and so on.
thanks
- D

liz.._4

I would not bother with the lottery but buy premium bonds as you get your original stake back and (I think) the odds are better for winning

danster

i do have 500 bonds, but havnt won anything for about 7 years! ive tried cashing them back in and buying new ones (ive heard that sometimes works).

Wyndham

OK, I'll say it. The only way to guarantee you win on the lottery is not to play. That way you still have the pound you would otherwise have lost

Seriously, if you want to do it, then the odds of winning on any draw of the same type are always the same e.g. it doesn't matter whether it is the Saturday lotto draw or the Wednesday lotto, the odds are the same for both games, though odds for Thunderball etc. are different. And in case anyone is reading this and thinking 'well, 10 hasn't come up for awhile, so probably will in the next one' then this is a fallacy and completely untrue - plastic balls have no memory.

Thunderball has more chance of winning small prizes, but there isn't much in it. Your chances of winning in general (even small amounts) are really quite small, and you will not (using the probabilities) win overall i.e. you will lose more money than you win.

It's not an investment, it's a bit of fun. Treat it as such and you'll be fine, look on it as an investment, and (as with any form of gambling) you'll probably lose.

nej

Perhaps I'm in the majority, but I've won more than I've paid out, so it can work. And no I didn't win the jackpot!

As Wnydham says, it's just a bit of fun. The only way to increase your odds of winning are:

1 - Join a syndicate (but get less if you win)
2 - Buy more tickets.

David_B_2

danster wrote:

hi all,
ive decided to start playing the lottery. does anyone know if i have more chance of winning at the scratch cards, on the wednesday lottery game or the saturday one. ild rather higher odds at winning smaller amounts of money than smaller odds winning bigger amounts of money. does anyone know of a list which lists all the games with the odds on winning? ive decided to use the lotterys website to do all this as i can just play without having to watch it on tv and so on.
thanks
- D

Personally I wouldn't waste your money lining the pockets of Camelot on the so-called national lotto. I like most, did it for years and got no more that £10 winnings back and overall I lost out. If I now want to play I use the free online lottery games instead. I know of 4, you can play each one twice per day so therefore you've already increased your changes and paid nothing. I go through spells and I've not played them for a few weeks and if I'm honest I've not had any big wins but nor did I on the national lotto and I paid for that! If interested try - http://www.bananalotto.co.uk/, http://www.thedailydraw.com/, http://www.strikermillion.com/, http://www.loopylotto.com/ . All pretty good with spam, dailydraw & strikemillion are linked some how so you only need to register for one if I remember correctly.

danster

thanks guys, good comments there. i found this site:
http://www.virtualworlddirect.com/vwdguest/default.asp?rq=0.9465448&m=99071PM&
what do you think? theres a few things i read on there which make me think "hmmmmmmm".

Gordon_the_Moron

danster wrote:

i do have 500 bonds, but havnt won anything for about 7 years! ive tried cashing them back in and buying new ones (ive heard that sometimes works).

That is nonsense, people think because more new bonds win prizes they have a better chance, that is not the case, more premium bonds have been sold in the last 6 years than in the previous 42 so there simply aren't as many old numbers to pick from.

Each £1 stake is just as likely to win as any other, so a married couple with £15k each in bonds and a single man with £30k of bonds are both equally likely to win (the single man has 30,000 numbers and the couple have 30,000 between them)

In July 2004 the £1m winner had £17 worth of bonds purchased in 1959, old numbers can't be left out of the draw as the numbers aren't programmed into ERNIE, it just generates numbers which are then checked against eligible bonds.

Open_Wallet_Surgery

Gordon_the_Moron wrote:

That is nonsense, people think because more new bonds win prizes they have a better chance, that is not the case, more premium bonds have been sold in the last 6 years than in the previous 42 so there simply aren't as many old numbers to pick from.

Each £1 stake is just as likely to win as any other, so a married couple with £15k each in bonds and a single man with £30k of bonds are both equally likely to win (the single man has 30,000 numbers and the couple have 30,000 between them)

In July 2004 the £1m winner had £17 worth of bonds purchased in 1959, old numbers can't be left out of the draw as the numbers aren't programmed into ERNIE, it just generates numbers which are then checked against eligible bonds.

I seem to get better results with my bigger blocks of bonds, rather than the smaller ones. I have roughly the same ammount of cash invested in both small <£1000 and in bigger >£1000 groups of bonds
Also the new purchases which are the bigger blocks seem to have won more lately
Conspiracy theorists go mad with that one !?!?!?!?!:eek:

wacko911

The lotto has about a 50% payout, for every pound paid in, 50p is paid out. (The rest goes on tax,profit,retailers,advertising etc..oh and so called 'good causes' thats another can of worms)

Now compare this to blackjack. A 'perfect' game of blackjack at a casio has a 97-99.5% payout (depending on rules). Now would you waste your money playing blackjact at a casio? If not, why on earth waste money on the 'lotto'. Even the worst casino games have a better payout out than the national lotto - Its a complete scam/tax on poor people who like the thought of getting rich quick!

I second the premium bonds route if your chasing a 'Big win' (without being fleeced at the same time).

nrsql

Not a fair comparison.
The payout on blackjack is also small.
Difference with the lottery and premium bonds is that there is a posssiblity of a large payout which makes it look more attractive but usually just means that there is less chance of a win and hence reduces the expected rate of return.

>> old numbers can't be left out of the draw as the numbers aren't programmed into ERNIE, it just generates numbers which are then checked against eligible bonds.

Immaterial - the numbers could be left out of the check of eligible bonds.