If you're
playing the national lottery in the UK then you are playing a 6/49 lottery
draw. So you are if you are in Canada. This simply means you get to chose 6
numbers from a choice of 49. In Switzerland its 6/45 and in New Zealand its
6/40. The differences allow for how many people the organisers think will buy
the tickets and therefore win the jackpot.
Country
Population
Lottery
Jackpot
Chances
iPurchase¹
UK
59,508,000
6/49
1
in 13,983,816
Yes
California
33,145,000
6/51
1
in 18,009,460
No
Canada
30,491,300
6/49
1
in 13,983,816
No
New York
18,196,000
6/51
1
in 18,009,460
No
Switzerland
7,262,000
6/45
1
in 8,145,060
Yes
Ireland
3,797,000
6/42
1
in 5,245,786
Yes
New Zealand
3,829,600
6/40
1
in 3,838,380
No
Main (U.S.)
1,253,000
6/42
1
in 5,245,786
No
(1) iPurchase means ticket sales
online
Prize monies are
distributed differently throughout. In New York for instance, 70% goes to the
jackpot and if you get 5+bonus (pretty difficult), you get a measly
$10,000! There is a consistent theme however, they all take around 50% out
of the pool for "good" causes.
Is it a good bet?
No. But hold on, you
didn't expect it to be. Only 50% of the money spent on tickets is returned in
the UK lottery. However only around 28% of it goes to "good" causes, whatever
they are. You can think of it as a small crack at a big pot and some good gets
done in the world whether you win or lose.
The worrying thing is the
22% or so that gets eaten by the ticket sellers, Camelot and the government. We
call this the 'vig', or the
'juice' in the U.S. This is huge. The inefficiency of the system costs the
decent punters of Britain around £14m per week. Lets hope that iPurchase, or buying tickets on the Internet,
changes that.
Money breakdown
Ticket money goes
to:
45%
Prizes
5%
'Top Up' Bin
(see below)
28%
Good
Causes
13%
Lottery
Duty
5%
Retailer
Commission (shop keepers vig)
3%
Camelot
Costs
1%
Profit
Prize Money split
£10
for matching 3
numbers
22% of remainder
for matching 4
numbers
10% of remainder
for matching 5
numbers
16% of remainder
for matching 5
+ bonus ball
52% of remainder +'top up'
+rollover
for matching
all six numbers
Special Rules
Top Up Bin: means money carried over for
special promotions like guaranteed jackpots
Rollover : If there is no jackpot winner,
then the entire jackpot prize pool is "rolled over" to the next draw.
No jackpot winners : If there is a 4th
consecutive draw where the jackpot wasn't won, the jackpot prize pool is shared
amongst the 5+bonus winners of the 4th draw or amongst the 5-match winners of
the 4th draw if there are no 5+bonus winners.
No 5+bonus winners : If there are no 5+bonus
winners then the 5+bonus prize pool is added to the jackpot prize pool for the
same draw. (Providing it isn't the 4th rollover week) (It happened once)
No 5 matches : If there are no 5-match
winners, the prize pool is added to the 4-match prize pool for the same
draw.
Odds
The UK lottery is a
6/49 system, called 649 in other countries. Each six ball combination is
unique and there are 13,983,816 of them.
Odds of matching balls on one
lottery ticket
Number of balls matched
One
chance in
Prize
Average Saturday Payout per person.
6
14
million
Jackpot
£2,100,000
5+bonus
2.3
million
Bonus
£102,000
5
55,550
Match 5
£1,530
4
1030
Match 4
£62
3
57
Match 3
£10
2
7.5
1
2.4
0
2.3
Notice anything odd here?
Well look at the average jackpot payout, £2,100,000. I wouldn't
mind it but we can calculate the amount the average should be tending towards.
It is 13,983,816 x 0.45 x 0.52 (45% of money goes to prizes and 52% of that
goes to the jackpot). That comes to £3,272,212 !! It is more than 50%
higher than the current average. To find out why, look to Strategy.
Is it fair?
Fair, now there's
a thing. Tough call, but at GGG we think that only 28% of money going to good
causes and only 50% being returned to the good people who contributed is a bit
hard to swallow. Not only that but the distribution of money is there solely to
fuel the desire to play again. Hardly noble.
How do they do it?
Well they give £10 to each person who's ticket matches 3 balls to
distribute money widely in the hope that those winners will play it straight
back. Its the oldest trick in the book. Next they highlight a really big
jackpot prize.
Fair versus Average
Payouts
Matching
Average Payout
Fair Payout
3 balls
£10
£11.33
4
£62
£206
5
£1,530
£11,098
5+bonus
£102,000
£466,127
6
£2,050,000
£2,796,763
We have
to be fair to Camelot and say that the true odds of matching 3 balls would mean
paying the punter £11.33 and so the tenner they offer isn't at all bad in
comparison to the other prizes. However catching 5 numbers is enough to make you want to kill
yourself. (Please don't) The jackpot on the other hand actually pays out over
the odds, as if those people weren't already fortunate enough. (See
Odds and Strategy)
Strategy
You would be right
in thinking that any combination of numbers is as likely to come up on draw
night as any other. (At least we hope they are, but that's another story for
another page in the GGG) So therefore there is no point in making a
special point of using systems or checking numbers that haven't come up for a
while, unless that process adds to your enjoyment.
Question: So is there
anything we can do? Well the answer is yes, there is something that you can
do to maximize the money you win when you win. You can't increase your chances
of winning but you can make sure that you get more than the average payout when
your numbers come up!
As we saw in
Is it fair?, the average jackpot payout is well below
what it should be from the amount allocated to those prizes. This is in part
because of that crazy day in January 1995 when 133 people won the
jackpot and picked up a measly £122,510 each. This was no fluke,
it was because the numbers fell into a regular pattern on the lottery form, a
pattern that people use to create their six numbers in a flash at the side of
the terminal.
This gives us a
clue as to what to do and its a trick that professional gamblers use all the
time to gain an advantage in any system where a pool of money gets distributed
to a few winners. (like betting on horses) Camelot rather strangely refuses to publish details of players
choices but we can get a good understanding of players habits from snippets
that they have released and from lotteries around the world.
Basically, people
are so lazy in creating an original set of numbers that what comes out of their
brains goes to show how stupid humans are. For instance, some players chose the
sequence 1,2,3,4,5,6 in the belief that no one else would think of such
a crazy thing. Trust me brother, more than 10,000 tickets are bought
with that combination every weekend!!! If it ever comes up, those lucky winners
will have won around £1000. Just about enough to buy that gun and point
it to their heads.
Many other
sequences have way above average subscription. Last weeks numbers, last weeks
plus or minus one, consecutive numbers, equally spaced numbers, famous peoples'
birth dates, nice patterns, etc....... .
Strategy
This is simple. Go
against all those things mentioned above and try and include high numbers,
especially above 31 which rules out most dates from getting in. It won't just
benefit you on the jackpot, but also if you match 4 or 5 or 5+bonus then your
payouts will be that much more than average. Happy hunting.
Fun
If you want have a
game of your own without giving money away to the lost causes, I mean good
causes, then you can. Try running a paris-mutual pool amongst your
friends, like a mini lottery. Its easy and you can adjust the game to suit the
number of players. Here's how;
First, you don't need to know exactly how many
people are playing but a rough guide will do.
Second, you don't need to know how much they are
going to play for, but for sense make the minimum bet £1 and the maximum
£10.
Third, decide who is going to run the thing and
split the pool and make the decisions.
And now to the
game:
Each player
decides how many people are going to win the Jackpot on draw night and writes
that number with their name on paper (Note: Zero is a number). Fold it.
Put the amount bet on the outside of the folded paper. Show the amount written
to operator, pay them and put the paper in the draw box..
When the number of
jackpot winners is declared, open the box and see who got it right. (If no one,
roll it over or give them their money back) If there's one winner, they get it
all. If there's two or more, you split the pool pro-rata according to the
original bet size.
Now to Jazz it up,
you can allow betting (by the original players) after the draw has been made
for about ten minutes (so they can't find out the result). This gives people
the chance to use their heads and think how 'unusual' the draw numbers are.
Good Luck. Also, the whole
thing can be done after the draw (10mins!)
(If there's a lot of people, like 50 or more, then
work with the number of bonus prize winners)
Good Causes
Camelot operates
The National Lottery and The National Lottery raises money for The National
Lottery Distribution Fund. The National Lottery Distribution Fund is held by
the Department of Culture, Media and Sports and is divided between the six Good
Causes which were chosen by Parliament: Arts, Sport,
Heritage, Charities, the Millennium and the New Oppotunities
Fund/Nesta.
The National Lottery was
established by Parliament to raise money for worthwhile causes. There are six
Good Causes - arts, sports, charities, heritage, celebrating the millennium and
the new health, education and environment cause.
There are twelve
distributing bodies responsible for giving grants to these Good Causes and of
the 28 pence from each lottery pound they recieve the percentages in brackets.
(16.7)The Arts
Councils of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland
(16.7).The
Sports Councils of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland
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