What are the odds of winning the UK euromillion lottery?

wooder

Mathematically, which gives you better odds....

buy 1 lucky dip ticket every week for a year, or....

buy 52 lucky dip tickets in one week then no more for the rest of the year ?

bowlhead99

wooder wrote: »

Mathematically, which gives you better odds....

buy 1 lucky dip ticket every week for a year, or....

buy 52 lucky dip tickets in one week then no more for the rest of the year ?

The first option is basically the same odds per ticket but involves buying more tickets and therefore you are more likely to win a prize. Depending on the year there are either 52 weeks and one day, or 52 weeks and two days, in a year. Therefore, buying a ticket every week you will on average buy more than 52 tickets each year because some years you will buy 53.

Also, the maximum win is improved with the 'buy weekly' route. This is because it would be possible to win every week if you bought weekly and were lucky. No matter how lucky you are, if you buy 52 lucky dip tickets for the Week 1 draw, you cannot win 52 jackpots. You would just split the pot with yourself.

This changes if there are a lot of other tickets purchased by other players. If there were 14 trillion tickets bought every week, there will on average be a million people winning the jackpot every week and if you ever won you would split the pot with them. If you bought 52 tickets for the Week 1 draw and the lucky dip gave you the same number for all of them, and it came up as the jackpot, you would win 52 millionths of the prize fund that week, while the person playing weekly would usually only win one millionth of the prize fund.

So for large volumes of players it would not be true to say that your maximum win is increased by playing 52 different weeks rather than 52 tickets for one week. Fortunately we know there are not large volumes of players, so my initial assertion is OK.

Personally given the choice I would play 52 different weeks. That is because there will be a certain number of rollover jackpots or 'special' weeks where the prize pot is increased on a one off basis. That doesn't happen most weeks, so mostly you would only get exposure to the 'normal' prize fund. If you play all the weeks you will definitely get exposure to all the 'extras'. One might think that it is just as good to play one week because if you were lucky then all your tickets might get exposure to a rollover, rather than just an 'average' number of them get exposure to a rollover. However as per the above analysis, entering multiple times in one week means you hit the problem that your tickets can't all win jackpots and if there aren't trillions of players you will be unable to do so well out of one week as a patient player could theoretically do out of 52 weeks.

So, the optimum way to play for maximum win potential is to play every week. If you have to buy 52 tickets, spread them out IMHO.

This disregards the fact that statistically the house wins and hence the optimum way to play is to play zero weeks for zero loss. That would be no fun.

planteria

InvestInPoker wrote: »

Shorty was a cop:shocked: interesting thread.. great contributions from bowlhead again. i play regularly, but if thought through properly, probably shouldn't bother

that said, i went into Morrisons to get a £1 coin for the parking the other week, and asked to check my ticket at the same time. she gave me the £1 and 5 £20s to go with it:T

noggin1980

bowlhead99 wrote: »

So, the optimum way to play for maximum win potential is to play every week. If you have to buy 52 tickets, spread them out IMHO.

Also the fact that again the only reason really to play the lottery is if the dream is worth a couple of quid a week to you. If you buy them weekly you get to dream all year for your hundred pounds. Buy them all in one go and you'll only dream once.

I'd recommend the lucky dip over picking your numbers because you can end up feeling obliged to play once you have your own numbers. Oh god what happens if I stop playing and my numbers come up, I couldn't live with myself. While thats a silly view it's easy and human nature to feel that way.

bowlhead99

noggin1980 wrote: »

I'd recommend the lucky dip over picking your numbers because you can end up feeling obliged to play once you have your own numbers. Oh god what happens if I stop playing and my numbers come up, I couldn't live with myself. While thats a silly view it's easy and human nature to feel that way.

Yes that's the problem with their 'set and forget' direct debit, you can never stop it, if you remember what your numbers were and they came up later it would probably hurt.

Even if you buy tickets over the counter and pick the option for lucky dip for 8 weeks twice a week, you still end up with the same numbers 16 times in a row, rather than them picking 16 sets of numbers for you. A bit offputting really so I don't buy them in bulk.

ColdIron

sav500 wrote: »

I once heard it described as a tax on the thick, which it is. You are never going to win. I am.

Or a tax on the untaxed

bowlhead99

ColdIron wrote: »

Or a tax on the untaxed

If I could get tax relief on the element of the ticket which funds charitable good causes I would buy more of them .

As it is I have to hold back from putting too much in the lotto so I can structure a more efficient deal where I put half my fun money in the charity bucket, get the 40%+ tax relief, and then go and play the other half of the cash in Vegas.

The tax relief on such a venture is enough of a 'win' to turn the gambling returns into a positive "expected value" experience. Of course it does mean I have to give away a bunch of my fun money to charities, so it only happens in my imagination rather than real life.

InvestInPoker

bowlhead99 wrote: »

The tax relief on such a venture is enough of a 'win' to turn the gambling returns into a positive "expected value" experience. Of course it does mean I have to give away a bunch of my fun money to charities, so it only happens in my imagination rather than real life.

There are plenty of ways to enjoy gambling with a positive expected value, no need to use your imagination!


As an example of something which regularly crops up with a not impossible to hit jackpot would be (warning lengthy and math heavy page) http://wizardofodds.com/games/caribbean-stud-poker/ Ignore the start and scroll to the section marked "Progressive Jackpot side bet". One internet casino's jackpot on this game recently got so high you were getting roughly a (average expected) return of £1.25 on every £1 bet on the side bet. Not bad for some fun gambling really.

bowlhead99

Yes the Wizard of Odds site is a good mine of information, I used it over a decade ago when practicing blackjack strategy and learning VP. There's a variety of casino games where the house edges aren't too bad when you know the strategy and can be easy to sink a lot of time into without losing too much money.

Still, the problem with odds is that having them in your favour doesn't actually mean you'll win in the timescale you want - like the stock market really. With a jackpot of $1,000,000 it would be nice to only need to make $900,000 of bets to win it - but then after you sink the $899,999th dollar one of the other players round the table wins it and the jackpot resets to a negative EV level. And with positive EV side bets you generally have to make a negative EV main bet to qualify for them

InvestInPoker

bowlhead99 wrote: »

And with positive EV side bets you generally have to make a negative EV main bet to qualify for them

In the real life situation I just described you could bet 10p on the main game and £1 on the side bet so that was no problem. And it is just the tip of the iceberg with +ev betting.