UK National Lottery

When the UK lottery started in 1994 there was only one game in town: the Saturday night lottery draw. Now there loads of games to chose from. The only day of the week not to have a lottery draw is Sunday. There are a wide variety of draws:

Saturday draw
Wednesday draw
Daily draw
Thunderball
Dream Number
Lucky numbers

Hotpicks uses the main Saturday and Wednesday draws to allow players more scope to win by guessing how many numbers they will match.

Scratch cards started off with the “Instant” cards, and by now there have been almost 70 types of lottery scratch card you could play. Camelot continue to increase the range of ways people can win.

Camelot have been very innovative too by using the internet and mobile phones to allow people to play more easily. e.g. You can now set up an account online and have your same series of numbers entered each week automatically. No need to go to the corner shop. No chance of forgetting!

All those different games means that there is more opportunity to win, but that prompts a big question, probably the biggest question and one that's on everyone's mind.

How do I win the Lottery?

People will often say that there is no way to win the lottery. There are, however, definitely ways that you can improve your odds of doing well and winning cash prizes. The important things to know are:

- What are other people picking?
- What numbers have worked in the past?
- What numbers have not worked in the past?

And

- Is there any one simple thing that I can do which will definitely increase my odds of winning a cash prize? (the answer is yes, by the way!)

What are other people picking?
People picking numbers

40% of jackpot-winners use Lucky Dip, but what about the rest? People have their own systems for picking numbers. Generally numbers that are important to them get priority. Numbers such as those in their birthdays, the birthdays of their partners, the birthdays of their children, etc.

There is something very important to note about this number-picking strategy: For months there are a maximum of 12 choices, 1-12; for days of the month there are a maximum of 31 choices.

With so many people using dates in their picks there are less people choosing the numbers 32 and upwards!

What numbers have worked in the past?
“Most frequent” strategy

Some things happen all the time. In international football, it's England vs Germany in the Euro championships, or England vs Argentina in the World Cup. The fact that it has happened many times before does not seem to make it less likely that it will happen again. When it does, everyone smiles and says “typical.”

In the same way there are many “typical” lottery numbers. They come up again and again. Arguably, a selection of the “most typical” lottery numbers will give you really good chance of winning. It certainly would have given you a really good chance if you had been playing those numbers over the last few years!

The 7 most frequent seen balls are (in order of most frequent first)

38 – 31 – 25 – 43 – 47 – 23 – 44

Cumulatively these balls have come up 1353 times between them!*

What numbers have not worked in the past?
“Least frequent” strategy

The other side of that coin (as we shall see) is the “least frequent” strategy. This is the strategy that, statisticians may say, gives you the highest chances of winning.

Think of it like this: if you toss a coin 4 times in a row, what are you likely to get as a result? You may be surprised to know that it's just as likely that you will get heads 4 times in a row as it is that you will get some combination of heads and tales.

Likewise, you're just as likely to get heads 7 times in a row as you are to get some combination of heads and tales. But, when you increase the number of times you toss the coin, say to 1000, the chances are that you will start to see things even-out between heads and tales. It may be 60: 40 heads to tales, or vice versa, but it's closer to 50: 50 than a smaller number. Increase the number of tosses again, say to 10,000 and chances are that you will see that you have an almost 50: 50 ratio of heads and tales.

This is called “revision to the mean.” Basically, in terms of picking numbers for the lottery, this means that any number that has not come up very much so far is more likely to come up in the future so that the number of times each number comes up, over all, evens-out. Just like our coin tosses. Picking a series of numbers that do not come up very frequently could be a very good strategy.

The balls that come out the least frequently are (in order of least frequent first)

13 – 41 – 16 – 20 – 15 – 39 – 5

So it really does seem that 13 has been an unlucky number (at least so far!). Altogether these numbers have come out 1050 times – 300 times less than the most frequent numbers!*

*up to Saturday 23/06/07
Is there any one simple thing that I can do which will definitely increase my odds of winning a cash prize?
The simplest way to increase your odds of winning

There is a very simple way to increase your odds of winning. Buy every number combination available. It may sound like a bad joke, but an Irish mathematician and his syndicate did just that in the Irish national lottery in the 1990s. They waited until the jackpot was high enough to make it a sure bet. Even if the jackpot was split, all the little prizes would still have made it worthwhile. They, of course, won the jackpot, as they had every combination, and the jackpot wasn't split. As a result of this the Irish lottery was changed to include 6 additional numbers to prevent anyone repeating the feat.

It may, however, surprise you to know that you can tilt the odds very significantly in your favour by copying part of the Irish mathematician's strategy: Join a syndicate.

The reason why being in a syndicate works is simple: the more times you enter the same lottery draw, the more likely you are to win a prize. Being in a syndicate of seven people, for example, means that you are seven times more likely to win a cash prize. That prize would be divided by seven, of course,  but if you're winning more, who cares?

Legal aspect
Are syndicates legal?

From the National Lottery's perspective there is no problem with people entering as syndicates. Syndicates have won approx 66% of jackpots and the National Lottery happily pays out to syndicates on a very regular basis.

The other legal aspects of syndicates are ones that requires some consideration, though. They can probably best be summed up by this question:

What if the person holding the winning ticket does a runner?

In order for there to be no legal ambiguity it is advisable for the individuals to sign legally binding contracts and keep a record of which numbers are theirs. That way if the numbers of a syndicate member come up, everyone knows AND if a syndicate member buys winning a ticket independently of the group, everyone can see that too, as all the numbers are written down.

The contract should include such important information as names, addresses, numbers chosen by members, details of how money is to be split (e.g. do you get more if your choice of numbers come up?), what the syndicate should do if someone has not paid for the coming draw, etc.

There is more paperwork to being in a syndicate than there is to playing as an individual, but it is the one strategy that is proven to win more frequently than any other.

Where does all the money go?

In the past Camelot have been accused, by some sections of the media, of profiteering from the national lottery, but few people realise that they only make a profit of 0.5p (a ha'penny) for each pound that is spent. Contrast that to the 5p that goes to the retailers as commission, or the 12p that goes to the government as “duty” and you can see that Camelot actually make a modest return. 28p from each pound goes to good causes, some of which are described below and 50p goes back to the public directly in prize money. Not just the big jackpots, but all the smaller cash prizes too!

Big losers

To date 24 prizes of more than 1 million pounds each have been won, but gone unclaimed. That is to say on 24 separate occasions people have won the lottery and then either lost their ticket, or just not bothered checking their numbers!

The winners
More than 2000 millionaire lottery winners have been created so far. That's a lot of people! But how has it effect their lives?

The media only seem to print stories of how people who have won the lottery are unhappy. There is a simple reason for that: No one wants to read a news story that says: “I won the lottery 10 years ago, and I still can't stop smiling and laughing.” That's not news.

In a MORI Poll of lottery winners, 96% say they are as happy or happier than they were before they won the lottery. Only 1 in 10 winners ever go public.

Elaine Thompson described winning the lottery. She was home alone with her kids as her husbands was out at the football. The numbers came on the TV and she sent her daughter out to get the ticket, thinking they had won a tenner for matching 3 numbers. Her daughter said she thought it was more than 10 pounds, maybe even a hundred. When she realised that they had hit the jackpot she felt sick. This was despite the fact that she had always known, been absolutely sure, in fact, that she would win the lottery at some point.

A surprising number of winners actually stay at work after winning, with about 1 in every 3 winners staying at their jobs. Julie

Jackie King stayed on in her job, for a while after winning £14 million. Until a girl she was working with was threatened with redundancy, and then she realised that someone else probably needed the job more than she did.

Roy Gibney was a sheet metal worker before he won. He did quit his job, but claims he's working harder than ever. He's having a library built for his grandchildren, and an extension built on the mansion he's already bought. There is already a massive swimming pool, a pub-sized bar and games room (complete with snooker table, roulette wheel, poker table, dart board, etc.) a lake and 25 acres of gardens to contend with. When he was asked by a newspaper if anyone else lived with him, he laughed: “Oh, no one else. It's not big enough for two!”

His family do spend a lot of time with him though. His nephews and nieces have their own sets of TVs and games consoles, so there are never arguments.

Family plays a big role for lottery winners: 99% say the have given money to their family. In fact 76% of winners say that giving money to their family and friends was a bigger buzz than spending money on themselves. Roy has paid off the mortgages of his brothers and sisters. 17% of lottery winners have paid off 5 or more mortgages.

Roy and Jackie both live in Grimsby. They are 2 of the 3 lottery millionaires in town.

Big Winners

Arguably the real big winners are the projects and communities that get lottery grants. Many of the projects would or could not be done at all without the assistance of the national lottery.

It's not a case of one “one big fund and everyone has  to scramble for a share.” The grant money is split into various pots to make sure that the bigger projects don't just swallow all the money.

The Cutty Sark and  the National Maritime Museum Ahoy Centre have received more than £15 Million pounds form the Heritage Lottery fund.

£4.2 million was even given away to good causes on ITV's “Peoples Millions”. The money was set aside in the so called Big Lottery Fund, and projects were voted for by member of the viewing public. Like Northamptonshire Trampoline Gymnastics Academy. They received a grant of £50,000 to help them provide trampoline gymnastic opportunities to everyone, particularly those with learning difficulties.

NESTA is a group that provides lottery funding to companies and individuals that want to push the boundaries of technology – money is granted to test new ideas that could have commercial applications. Unlike the other funds money is paid back into NESTA from successful ventures.

Sports and film make up the majority of the rest of the groups, with separate funding groups for Arts, Sports and film in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The University of Bolton recently received £50,000 pounds in funding over the next 3 years to help encourage young people to actively participate in sport and out-door pursuits.

Ultimately it's on a personal level that the lottery funding makes a difference.

In September, 47 veterans from the Parachute Regimental Association are going to Ypres and Arnhem (the paratroopers' accomplishments and sacrifices at Arnhem were famously captured in the film “A Bridge Too Far”). Without lottery funding the Veterans would have had to try to raise all the money to pay for the trips themselves.

Entire communities can be empowered by lottery funding too. In the case of the outer Hebredian islands, what has happened as a result of National Lottery funding is nothing short of a social and economic revolution.

In the old days, such island-estates were owned by Lords (or Lairds, more correctly). The people who live there were basically serfs. Working the fields and fishing to pay the estate owners rent. In more modern times the estate owners were large companies. Thanks to a massive £2 million lottery grant, and some hard work and financial wizardry from the locals, the inhabitants of the island will finally be free. Now the place is hopping with ideas and enthusiasm. It is not just that they will own their own land, or make their own decisions democratically. The national lottery has given the people of these islands something that they didn't have in great abundance: hope for the future.