Have you ever dreamed of playing the lottery and
becoming a millionaire. Bet you have - we all have.
However, for the majority of us, that remains a dream and every week we
play on the Lottery and cross our fingers. Unfortunately,
the odds of winning the main
lottery prize (the jackpot) are stacked against you.
The chances of winning any prize on the UK
National Lottery is a massive 54 to 1 - that means that even if you
play once a week for a year the odds are that you will not win anything
back at all.
There is no sure fire way of reducing those ods
- you can purchase all sorts of software on the internet which tries to
look at the past results from games and identify the numbers which are
most likely to be drawn, but the National Lottery remains a game of
pure chance - the machines are independently monitored to ensure that
every ball has a 1 in 49 chance of being drawn every week, so don't
think that just because one ball has been drawn every week for the last
12 weeks, it will be drawn again this week!
We used to promote the online syndicate scheme set up by Virtual
World Direct (now relaunched as Big Fat Lotteries), which reduced the chances of winning a prize to 1 in 13
by offering you a part in an syndicate which had 88 lines in the twice
weekly Lotto draw for £5 per week. However, 7 years or so, that
scheme was closed down in 2010 by the Department of Business,
Innovation and Skills for misleading advertising.
The
rules have
even been tightened on the National
Lottery's
own
website, after they have had to remove the
possibility of accessing the website from overseas, due to some
countries forbidding their residents from playing foreign lottery games
(presumably to safeguard their own lottery schemes).
Forming a syndicate remains the best way of spreading your chances
of winning the lottery, as it means that you get to play in more lines
for your money. The Official
National Lottery Website contains a standard syndicate agreement which you can draw
up to ensure that you are protected when you join a syndicate (ie. the
winnings do not belong to one person, and any payment out is then not
seen as a gift which could make it subject to Inheritance Tax!).
We therefore now recommend a simpler online lottery syndicate, which is run by a UK based company (rather than one based in Panama such as Virtual World Direct, or the British Virgin Islands, such as Big Fat Lottery - run by the same people). The online lottery syndicate we now recommend is LoveMyLotto.com. LoveMyLotto.com runs syndicates with only 21 people, and not only offers entries on the standard National Lottery and EuroMillions draws, but also includes enties in the National Lottery daily play draw and even the UK Government's monthly premium bond draw for only £10 per month.
There are a few different types of play to win
games available online. Similar to the lottery game; in the game of bingo, to
win you need to match a row or pattern of numbers on a card with the completely
random number balls drawn, see if you can match a line of numbers at
dream bingo.
Bingo games also have a large jackpot to play for, in addition to bonus and
smaller jackpots on different days and instant win games like 75-ball, plus
players also have the option of playing together.
The
National Lottery offers a range of
scratchcards (and online quick win games on their website), as well as
a range of lottery draws.
The lottery draws are:
- Thunderball (a Wednesday, Friday and Saturday draw, with a top prize
of £500,000)
- EuroMillions Draw (a draw played
across various countries on both Tuesday and Friday nights, which also incorporates a
raffle number printed on every ticket to enter a £1 million raffle draw
for all UK players)
- National Lottery Draw (the most
famous draw, held on a Wednesday and Saturday night)