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Lottery

This Week

Saturday 6th February 2010

Bonus

Jackpot

£3,668,220
5 winners

Category	No. of Winners	Amount per Winner	Total
Match 6 (Jackpot)	5	£733,644	£3,668,220
Match 5 plus bonus	41	£27,528	£1,128,648
Match 5	1,056	£668	£705,408
Match 4	49,001	£31	£1,519,031
Match 3	751,004	£10	£7,510,040
Totals	801,107		£14,531,347
Total Sales	0.7% fall		£32,365,132

Last Few Weeks

Date	Numbers	B	3	4	5	5+	Jackpot	Win
03-02-10	3 11 12 20 21 28	31	10	30	721	85,399	£1,942,838	1
30-01-10	2 3 4 19 23 40	22	10	52	1,444	76,838	£4,245,350	2
27-01-10	1 4 7 11 13 27	12	10	12	181	9,924	£1,322,450	5
23-01-10	3 7 8 16 19 30	9	10	29	588	28,705	£5,989,293	3*
20-01-10	2 16 17 18 27 28	43	10	44	778	347,312	£2,257,533	0
16-01-10	4 7 10 14 27 42	25	10	29	704	65,355	£5,913,570	5
13-01-10	6 8 14 16 21 43	19	10	51	1,280	59,071	£2,303,805	0
09-01-10	20 24 33 34 37 48	25	10	112	3,286	231,349	£7,826,974	2*
06-01-10	4 16 18 43 45 49	23	10	90	2,381	131,475	£2,563,777	0
02-01-10	26 29 30 42 43 47	18	10	108	2,789	132,388	£2,581,567	2
30-12-09	5 14 27 29 34 35	4	10	66	1,807	251,657	£10,257,210	1
26-12-09	2 8 23 25 36 42	30	10	50	1,132	90,487	£6,985,669	0
23-12-09	15 18 26 32 36 37	22	10	91	2,677	147,101	£2,868,480	0
19-12-09	1 20 28 33 40 45	35	10	97	2,763	308,602	£5,014,788	2
16-12-09	2 20 34 35 40 44	49	10	112	3,575	446,240	£2,900,560	1
12-12-09	3 13 22 23 39 45	4	10	56	1,414	121,219	£4,333,586	2
09-12-09	5 13 31 36 40 41	6	10	93	2,763	123,800	£2,816,470	2
05-12-09	8 20 36 43 45 49	12	10	106	3,246	124,270	£5,250,430	2
02-12-09	2 19 22 25 34 47	28	10	59	1,369	127,127	£7,572,606	2*
28-11-09	3 4 27 30 36 47	8	10	74	2,381	240,023	£4,680,451	0
25-11-09	3 6 11 17 23 29	44	10	19	315	22,726	£6,804,104	8*
21-11-09	9 24 30 32 36 40	35	10	76	2,115	166,965	£4,883,733	0
18-11-09	1 4 12 13 18 19	38	10	34	701	91,276	£2,076,538	1
14-11-09	1 5 9 20 23 39	38	10	45	1,039	56,493	£4,222,850	5
11-11-09	4 6 12 31 38 48	23	10	58	1,371	95,180	£11,450,024	2*
07-11-09	19 21 39 44 45 49	47	10	87	2,498	137,591	£8,047,337	0
04-11-09	1 2 23 39 42 49	5	10	87	2,455	412,501	£2,681,258	0
31-10-09	12 18 26 35 40 44	49	10	66	1,477	168,127	£12,818,352	4*
28-10-09	24 25 34 38 41 43	11	10	104	3,057	199,604	£7,354,212	0
24-10-09	5 9 12 31 32 38	3	10	54	1,531	114,983	£4,110,646	0
21-10-09	6 12 16 19 33 44	20	10	37	770	57,597	£2,059,106	1
17-10-09	11 25 27 32 37 43	3	10	69	1,799	53,926	£4,556,769	1
14-10-09	5 11 24 32 35 42	20	10	54	1,262	81,448	£2,382,372	4
10-10-09	17 36 37 40 43 45	34	10	112	3,270	267,716	£5,220,480	2
07-10-09	26 27 28 43 45 46	5	10	112	2,541	294,191	£2,868,364	2
03-10-09	14 21 23 32 36 46	17	10	83	2,372	149,559	£4,860,682	2
30-09-09	2 10 15 28 36 41	8	10	62	1,453	64,342	£2,509,338	3
26-09-09	3 5 17 32 40 43	29	10	64	1,638	107,101	£4,525,058	1
23-09-09	23 25 28 41 46 47	27	10	106	3,024	866,164	£3,681,197	1
19-09-09	18 20 31 33 43 45	1	10	101	2,890	224,606	£5,109,794	1
16-09-09	18 23 34 44 46 48	6	10	86	2,516	140,248	£2,734,854	2
12-09-09	18 20 24 30 43 44	47	10	87	2,261	265,914	£7,635,790	2
09-09-09	2 11 23 28 35 39	15	10	56	1,410	57,999	£2,450,464	0
05-09-09	12 19 22 26 36 41	39	10	66	1,726	84,089	£6,805,792	7
02-09-09	2 4 7 27 28 35	21	10	34	878	41,463	£1,886,585	0
29-08-09	9 18 34 37 39 47	5	10	80	2,252	107,886	£4,908,817	1
26-08-09	3 9 11 17 27 48	6	10	24	507	18,313	£6,671,970	3*
22-08-09	18 23 24 36 43 44	21	10	70	2,111	83,054	£4,588,768	0
19-08-09	10 23 26 30 41 45	49	10	81	2,229	161,940	£2,631,541	1
15-08-09	16 31 32 46 47 48	34	10	120	2,977	201,263	£5,232,847	1
12-08-09	9 20 21 27 39 40	14	10	79	2,263	80,399	£2,612,973	1
08-08-09	9 17 26 32 33 36	6	10	68	1,857	105,064	£7,474,168	1*

* denotes rollover jackpot

What is it?

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!). Or start playing online bingo and take your chances there, its fun and you meet loads of people because it is such a social game.

(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
(16.7)The National Lottery Charities Board
(16.7)The National Heritage Memorial Fund
(33.3) New Opportunities Fund/Nesta