Lottery - improve your odds?

Gorgeous_George

Hi

Having seen that Premium Bonds can live on the Savings and Investments Board, I decided to share my cunning lottery plan with you all.

It is a fact that any set of six numbers have an identical chance of winning the lottery as any other. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 could win as easily as your lucky dip numbers or even numbers 44, 45, 46 , 47 48 and 49. If you accept those statements, read on. If not, get back to your homework and leave the grown-ups alone

So, rather than just taking birthdays and house numbers etc., why not take the 50's complement. This means that 1 becomes 49, 2 becomes 48 etc., (i.e., subtract the original number from 50 and repeat for all 6 numbers).

Doing this will not increase your chances of winning. So why do it?

Well, firstly, it won't decrease your chance of winning, so, nothing to lose. Secondly, and most importantly, if you win with high numbers, you are less likely to share your prize with lots of other people. So instead of winning £30 for four numbers, you could win £100. Instead of winning £1million along with 4 or 5 other winners, you would win the whole of the jackpot yourself.




GG

________________________________________________________________

FREE LOTTERY CHECKER - JUST PM ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (You need Excel). With this simple spreadsheet, you can enter any six numbers and the spreadsheet will tell you how often you would have won 3, 4, 5, 5+bonus ball and 6 numbers assuming that you had taken those numbers since the lottery began.

capehorn

I've heard of a few people who only pick numbers above 30 or below 15 because "one day... it'll happen".

ronnie_2

pm sent for the lottery checker program, sounds neat

Stonk

Gorgeous_George wrote:

I decided to share my cunning lottery plan with you all.

It's all correct, of course, but it's hardly your cunning plan. This phenomenon has been known and publicised since the day the lottery began.



I entered 1,2,3,4,5,6 for the first draw, on the assumption that very few people would do so. We now know that actually this was - and continues to be - a very common entry, and if it ever came up you'd find yourself sharing the prize with thousands of others.

Colxfile

On a point of pedantry, your odds are not affected at all. It's the expected profit / loss that you aim to improve with such a plan.

And, of course, if enough people cotton to this then the potential benefit of a larger jackpot is whittled away.

Mikeyorks

Very good ...... now, where's me lottery pin? Oops - rolled under the pile of Premium Bonds again!;)

Is this a Halloween thread?

Cypher

I don't do the lottery any more, but when it first started, Week1, I picked my numbers based on the most unpopular numbers I could find.

To do this I got a list of everbodies numbers I came in contact with. Syndicates lists, individuals, Friends and Family etc anyone I could, I asked them for their numbers.

I stuck all the numbers into a spreadsheet and then sorted them in order of popularity. I then picked my numbers using the most unpopular ones.


I did work well as I won 4 numbers a few times and each time got a decent pay out. The only trouble was it was still hard to get 3 or more numbers.

Milarky

Has this occurred to Camelot too? A large proportion of tickets sold are 'lucky dip' (chosen by them) and as a draw approaches they could 'know' which numbers were being clustered by all the millions of entries picked by the players themselves. Thus (I'm sure they've looked into it) they could actually take account of the numbers entered to skew the selection of LD numbers (presumably 'away') from them. [Extreme example every LD consists of the same six numbers - the punters either all win nothing - where some would have won something - or all win something - at least £10]

Any thoughts?

sra

Often when people try to pick random numbers, they actually end up picking the same numbers as many other people. They look at the slip and attempt to make what looks like a random pattern - e.g with an equal amount of large medium and small numbers.

The best way to get a big jackpot is to get a computer to pick random numbers for you.

For quite a while after the National Lottery first started, they didn't give the lucky dip option even though it was built into the machines. The reason being that they wanted many people picking the similar numbers and staying away from rarer combinations. This meant that rollovers were much more likely to happen.

EDIT: Just did a quick search - it tells you a bit about what I was saying at he bottom here.

Cypher

Milarky wrote:

Has this occurred to Camelot too? A large proportion of tickets sold are 'lucky dip' (chosen by them)

Funny you should mention that, I stopped doing the lottery when they introduced the luck dip :rolleyes: I never did trust it, and who it was lucky for.

whambamboo

Gorgeous_George wrote:

Hi

Having seen that Premium Bonds can live on the Savings and Investments Board, I decided to share my cunning lottery plan with you all.

It is a fact that any set of six numbers have an identical chance of winning the lottery as any other. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 could win as easily as your lucky dip numbers or even numbers 44, 45, 46 , 47 48 and 49. If you accept those statements, read on. If not, get back to your homework and leave the grown-ups alone

So, rather than just taking birthdays and house numbers etc., why not take the 50's complement. This means that 1 becomes 49, 2 becomes 48 etc., (i.e., subtract the original number from 50 and repeat for all 6 numbers).

Doing this will not increase your chances of winning. So why do it?

Well, firstly, it won't decrease your chance of winning, so, nothing to lose. Secondly, and most importantly, if you win with high numbers, you are less likely to share your prize with lots of other people. So instead of winning £30 for four numbers, you could win £100. Instead of winning £1million along with 4 or 5 other winners, you would win the whole of the jackpot yourself.




GG

________________________________________________________________

FREE LOTTERY CHECKER - JUST PM ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS (You need Excel). With this simple spreadsheet, you can enter any six numbers and the spreadsheet will tell you how often you would have won 3, 4, 5, 5+bonus ball and 6 numbers assuming that you had taken those numbers since the lottery began.

The problem is Gorgeous, the lottery is a garbage investment unusited to any money-saving expert, with -50% interest in 1 week :eek: