Giving up the lottery - how do you do it?

all_hours

Mrs_J wrote:

I'm not so sure this is the case. Does 1 in 57 chance not mean everytime you play you have a 1 in 57 chance, not that it takes about 57 goes to win? Think about it, pregnant ladies have a 1 in 2 chance of a boy or girl, but if that pregnant lady has a baby boy, her next child is not automatically a girl, it's straight back to a 1 in 2 chance. So everytime you play the lottery your chances remain at 1 in 14 million for the jackpot, and having two tickets does not reduce the odds either!

I do take your point though, that except for a very lucky few (and yes I am jealous ), the rest of us are quite frankly giving our money away.

Compare it to rolling a fair die. You bet on it being a 1 so each roll you have a 1 in 6 chance of being right. If you rolled the die a sufficiently large number of times you would expect the number of 1s,2s etc to be about equal. So you would expect to win 1 in 6 times.

Its the same with the lottery numbers - over a long period of time you'd expect the 49 numbers to have roughly equal number of appearances. It is a 1 in 57 chance time each time you play - if you stick with the same numbers on average you would win once for every 57 times you play them - but not necessarily spread out evenly.

Having 2 tickets with different numbers does reduce your odds as an individual. Each line has a 1 in 14 million chance - 2 tickets gives you a 2 in 14000000 chance - which is 1 in 7 million.

Grade_A_Reject

tesuhoha wrote:

Even if you bought one ticket a week you would save £54 over the year and be £54 richer.

How many weeks in your year?

My mother-in-law spends Saturday's enthusing about what she's going to spend her winnings on then the other six days of the week depressed from not having won. The cycle repeats itself the next Saturday.

The number of rollover weeks are good indication of how high the odds are. Out of the millions and millions of tickets sold not one winner. Yet every single person who bought a ticket must have believed they stood a chance of winning else they wouldn't have bought a ticket.

This has been suggested in another thread but have you tried the free online lotteries like banana lotto? You probably still won't win anything but at least your pound stays in your pocket.

mookybargirl

Here's my idea for people who have the same numbers every week. Change one of those numbers now. Just one. If the reality of missing all 6 numbers is too much, 1 number short wouldn't be so much to bear and it might give you a win by adding to your remaining numbers.

After a week or two, change this new number again so you don't get used to that being 'one of your numbers' and change a 2nd number too.

After a week or two, change both the 1st, 2nd replacement numbers again and also a 3rd of your original numbers.

Repeat, repeat, repeat until you have replaced the last and 6th number and soon your numbers will be unrecognisable and then you can stop playing all together. It then won't matter if you see the results each week, as you'll have had 27 numbers over the course.

oakdale_minx

I did the lottery religiously for the first 18 months. One line, set numbers. Won nothing. Stopped after 18 months, but it was painful for quite a while. Tortured myself for quite a while, sneakily looking at the numbers.

Don't understand all the different ones now as I don't even bother/think about it.

I like a bet or two (bookies aren't scary at all, the staff are always there to help) and did the Irish once, years ago. I won the lowest prize, I think it was £5?

Dr.Shoe_2

It's so easy to stop doing the lottery.

All you do is not go to the lottery shop and not fill in the little slip and not go to the counter with the slip you didn't fill in and then not get the money out of your pocket.

The laws of Karma are that if you are destined to receive a large amount of money you will get it. Believe it or not you have a greater chance of inheriting money than you have of winning the equivalent on the lottery.

Lois_Lane

Dr.Shoe wrote:

It's so easy to stop doing the lottery.

All you do is not go to the lottery shop and not fill in the little slip and not go to the counter with the slip you didn't fill in and then not get the money out of your pocket.

The laws of Karma are that if you are destined to receive a large amount of money you will get it. Believe it or not you have a greater chance of inheriting money than you have of winning the equivalent on the lottery.

Thanks for that Dr Shoe - there's always someone who thinks everything is a walkover. My problem isn't the fact that I don't know how to stop doing the lottery, it's my OH who is obsessed with checking the numbers twice a week so I can't get away with cancelling the DD.

LL

heppy23

I used to do the lottery, used to run the work syndicate etc.

Then I went through a review of where all my money went and the lottery was one of the things that went.

14 million is an incredibly large number, once you realise that you will realise you really have virtually no real chance of winning a large amount of money.

I work in quite a deprived town in South Yorkshire and the lottery machine is always busy, makes me feel sad. People take it so seriously with special little wallets to keep their tickets in etc.

My OH does the lottery and I have said to here if she gets 4 numbers or more I will take my clothes off and jump out the window - we live in a first floor flat!

tomstickland

The numbers are random. It doesn't make any difference whether you use the same "magic" numbers every time or just choose any old crap.

Grade_A_Reject

Here's a thought..... If everyone didn't do the lottery one week on the same week and instead gave half the money they would have spent to their chosen charity....

There would be no prize fund so no-one would need to think about what they could have won. Of each £1 you would have otherwise given away you still have 50p in your pocket so you'd be better off in that respect. The good causes lose their 28p but gain 50p in place of it so they win too. There are of course two losers, Camelot and the government. Shame. :rolleyes:

BrianGrant

Grade_A_Reject wrote:

Here's a thought..... If everyone didn't do the lottery one week on the same week and instead gave half the money they would have spent to their chosen charity....

There would be no prize fund so no-one would need to think about what they could have won. Of each £1 you would have otherwise given away you still have 50p in your pocket so you'd be better off in that respect. The good causes lose their 28p but gain 50p in place of it so they win too. There are of course two losers, Camelot and the government. Shame. :rolleyes:

There is of course at least one other loser, ie the person(s) who would otherwise have won the jackpot.

I'm surprised to see the lottery being thought of as some kind of addiction. The amount you spend is what it's all about. The odds against winning the jackpot may be huge, but if you don't buy a ticket you can't win it and that's that. I buy tickets over the web for an 8 week period and they send me a reminder when my 8 weeks is up, so I don't even think about it in the meantime. If I win, which I have done though only small amounts, I get an email telling me so. I always use lucky dips because then I don't have that fear of not doing my "special" numbers.

I don't think I would ever stop doing the lottery because I can't think where else I'm going to get a million pounds from. I don't spend more than a couple of quid a week and the money is going to things that wouldn't otherwise get funding.