| Lottery Bets |
|
LOTTERY PLAYING A man rushes into his house and yells to his wife, 'Martha, pack up your things! I just won the lottery!' Martha replies, 'Should I pack for warm weather or cold?' The man responds, 'I don't care. Just get out!'
Why Haven't I Won The Lottery Jackpot Yet? Could it be the lottery jackpot isn't yours because the planets are in the wrong alignment…? Maybe you registered too late, or too early? Could it be that you did something bad and this is your punishment...? I know, maybe you won a little bit last week so it really isn't your turn again yet... The reason you didn't hit that lottery jackpot yet, is simply because the lottery is REALLY hard to win. It may not look like a lot of different numbers - but when you do the hard-hitting mathematics, your chances of winning are somewhere in the region of 1 in 14 million, depending on which lottery you play. Even worse for a Powerball Lottos and Euromillions. That's why you haven't won yet, and it's the only reason. LOTTERIES The lotteries are controlled by governments as are the casinos. As we all know, the governments are permitted to do basically whatever they want to do. The definition of a lottery is a game which people enter by selecting a set of numbers that may match those drawn later for the chance of winning money or prizes. The largest games in Portugal are the Totoloto, Lotaria Popular and Euromilhões managed and operated by the Santa Casa de Misericordia. Other types of popular games include scratch cards which give instant winnings.
The Lottery is the worst form of gambling Playing the government-run lotteries is the worst type of gambling. I believe that the reason is the fact that lottery commissions consider the players to be both fools and mathematical idiots. But we are neither, are we? We know the fundamental truth, right? We have science on our side. Let's make our voice heard. Otherwise, the lotteries will turn worse and worse for the players. Just recently, in the USA, the Pennsylvania Lottery introduced a new game (Super 6) with extremely high odds: about 120 million to one! Even worse, the player is only allowed to choose his/her own numbers for one out of three tickets. Well, that basically means that your odds worsen by two-thirds (66.7%)! You should never, ever play games in which you may not select your own numbers! Still, the slot machines are ruled by a +- 10% house advantage, while the state lotteries punish us with a 50% to 90%+ house edge (5 to 19 times worse)! There is a plethora of terms describing the additional obstacle the players face. 'House advantage', 'house edge', 'percentage advantage', 'takeout', 'vigorish'… I think of a unified term, defined with more precision. The lottery commissions " take out" 50% of ticket sales, therefore distributing 50% to prizes. But the 'house edge' is not necessarily 50%: It depends on a specific game and prize. The best term is player's disadvantage. For example, in a lotto 6/49 game, the odds of winning the jackpot are '1 in 13,983,816'; if the winner is paid €1,000,000 for a €1 winning ticket, the player's disadvantage is {1 – 1000000/13983816} = {1 – 0.0715) = 92.8%. At the double-zero roulette, the probability of winning a straight-up bet is '1 in 38'. The casino plays €36 for a €1 winning bet. The player's disadvantage is {1 – 36/38} = {1 – 0.9474} = 5.26%. I suggest we never, ever play games in which we are not allowed to choose our own numbers, or digits, or any other type of outcome. The lotteries must lower their unreasonably high house advantage to no higher than 30%. According to mathematics, a 30% house edge represents the 50-50 chance for the player. We should call it the lower line of fairness and should not be willing to bend below it. The lotteries should eliminate the obscene prizes, such as prizes in the range €1 to €5. Such prizes are a sort of mockery, sand in the eyes... The lotteries must have no more than 4 prize categories, with a diminished first prize (the so-called jackpot). Higher second and third prizes will be more attractive to the player. Consequently, there will be a higher number of players, higher sales for the lotteries, and also a better return for the player.
PROBABILITIES EUROMILLIONS = 1: 76.275.360 Probability Why is it so hard? In all honesty, I don't see anything out there that offers better ways to winning at gambling or lottery. I wish there was something easier and more efficient than my approach. Nothing is, honestly. People talk about methodology and systems, which don´t really win the lottery or gambling — there is absolutely nothing to accomplish such daunting tasks. Never will be. It’s mathematics. Never mind that they will continue to put huge efforts in playing the stock market or predicting the weather. They have some advantages, but lottery/gambling have their advantages as well. In the end, it's all about streaks and skips, no matter what the phenomenon is. The skips (misses) are shorter and the streaks are longer if the probability is higher; and vice versa. In fact, the science of gambling is the science of the streaks. Theory of probability in general is the science of the streaks and skips. A statement such as "This event will always have the probability equal to zero point zero zero three four etc." is virtually meaningless. The probability represents the ratio of the favorable cases over total possible cases. So, it works with integers. In real-life we deal with integers (discrete values) such as numbers of elements and numbers of trials. The events will hit-or-miss in streaks pretty clearly predicted by rules and formulas of probability theory. If you play longer sessions at the blackjack table, for example, you will face a higher probability of some very long losing streaks. But play shorter sessions, and there is a far better chance that you'll escape with shorter losing streaks. To have a 99.9% degree of certainty that your lotto (pick-6) ticket (with 6 numbers) will come out a winner, you would have to play it for almost 14 million consecutive drawings! At a pace of 100 drawings a year, it would take over 690,000 years…! Why so long? Let’s be more realistic and explain….20 plays per week x 52 weeks, gives 1040 plays a year… If you play from birth and live to a 100 years, that’s 104,000 play combinations…If you live to a 1,000 years of age, that’s 1,040,000… To reach 14,000,000 combos, you’ll need to reach the nice age of around 13,000 years of age…. Then again, realize that each bet is independent of each other as already explained, so there is no guarantee that your combination will come up after 13,000 years. Eventually, if all theory of probabilities was true, the number will show up, but in mathematics, there is something called infinity, and that means that those lucky numbers you chose 13,000 years ago, might not come up again for a few million or even billion years. That’s true. Just ask your local high school math teacher. I got a 5 out of 6 lotto result back in 1992. I won about 500 euros. I changed numbers from this winning combo. Choosing a new group of numbers, and playing lotto almost every week over the last 16 years, I have only gotten a few 4. How To Win The Lottery... First I want you to promise me something, ok? Before I tell you how to win the lottery, I want you to forget everything you've learnt before today about winning the lottery. All of it ok! Fact is most win the lottery tips you'll read are complete a waste! They spout on about the numbers you should select, or those you shouldn't. They talk about hot or cold numbers, or ones that are due, or picking numbers according to certain mathematical sounding rules. It's a waste of your time and money. The most important lesson you can take away today, is that nobody can beat the system. Fundamentally, every single ball has exactly the same chance of being drawn as any other. So any crazy lottery system claiming to pick numbers with a better chance of winning, or eliminate numbers with less chance of winning is simply ridiculous. Every jackpot winner since the first ever ball was drawn has been lucky. (Even if they may believe differently!) But You Can Still Do A Couple Of Things To Increase Your Chances Of Winning OK, I know that first bit is disheartening if you were looking for some kind of secret system on how to win the lottery. But don't be down - firstly you've just saved a bunch of money because now you won't bother buying any worthless lottery systems. And second, when you use the tips below you'll already be ahead of nearly everyone else playing the lottery.
So Here's Those Quick Lottery Tips: 1. Decide how to play. Your strategy may be 5 tickets every week, 20 tickets in the first draw of the month, or 100 tickets whenever the jackpot hits a certain size. But decide how you want to play and make sure you buy your tickets in time. The only guarantee is that no ticket means no win. 2. Choose the right game. Check the odds - who cares if the jackpot is ten times bigger if it's fifty times harder to win it. As a general rule forget the power ball games and play the 6 from 49 games like Totoloto. Power ball games have big rollover jackpots purely because they have extremely tough odds. But would winning 100 million change your life any more than 10 million? Switching from playing power ball to playing the standard game will typically increase your winning chances by 20 times. So play the game that's easier to win. 3. Picking better lottery numbers. You cannot pick numbers that are more likely to win. But you can pick those that are less likely to have been chosen by other players. Why does that matter? Because when you win the jackpot you share the prize with anyone else who picked the same. So avoid picking popular numbers and you increase your chance of a better jackpot. 4. Buy more tickets. This is the dumbest, simplest, most obvious and yet most overlooked tip. It's often misunderstood too. The maths is actually simple, buy 2 tickets and you double your chance of winning. Buy 10 tickets and yes, you have 10 times the chance. Simple as that, but use the same numbers for 5. Play less often. If you normally play 10 combos a week, why not switch to playing 20 combos every 2 weeks, or 80 combos once a month when there’s that big jackpot. Even though you don't play every draw your overall chances of winning a bigger jackpot are better, especially if you have to share. It's a small increase, but when you're dealing with big odds every little count. Just balance fun with common sense, and never spend more than you can afford to lose. 6. Share the fun and increase the odds. Start your own pool or syndicate. Everybody pools a small amount of money to buy a larger number of tickets than they would otherwise be willing to risk buying, then the winnings are split equally between the group. An instant and significant boost to your chances of winning the lottery without any extra cost. It's simple yet very, very effective. The organisers of the UK Lotto, are happy to point out – an astounding 1 out of every 4 Jackpots are claimed by syndicates! The only way to guarantee winning the jackpot is to buy every possible combination of numbers. Or to have a friendly time traveler from the future pay you a visit. But that single most important (if slightly dull) fact is this - the ONLY way to increase your CHANCES of winning is to buy more tickets. So what you really need is a way to spread the risk whilst still significantly boosting your chances. And that is why some bright spark came up with the idea of a lottery syndicate (or lottery pool). Everybody puts in a small amount of money - you buy a lot more tickets, get a much better chance of winning - and split the prize money. The key to a great syndicate is balance of risk, cost and size of the group. There are also other problems with smaller syndicates. Usually being office based pools or groups of friends, unless the organiser is a dedicated tyrant, there are problems of people not paying on time, people dropping out, daft number selection (we cover this later in the course), and the unthinkable danger of numbers not being entered due to holiday or illness. 7. Use the same numbers. Although I make it clear that each outcome is independent from previous outcomes, I am a believer that the odds do increase in your favor when you repeat the same numbers. So think through what you want and why, then stick with them. What I do is sometimes, just for fun, on bigger jackpots, I will chose more numbers. When I see prize monies at 350.000€ like for Loto 2 or something, I don’t waste my money. I save and wait until there is a big jackpot. If there is a big prize on Saturday, and low for Loto2, you are better off doubling your bet for the Lotto on Saturday. Jackpots Up To €50 Million! The Euro Millions draw is a combination draw involving 5 balls drawn from 50, PLUS 2 balls drawn from 9 (termed 'Lucky Stars'). 5 balls plus the 2 lucky stars must be matched to claim the jackpot - giving a 1 in 76 million chance of winning, as opposed to 14 million to 1 for the UK Lotto draw (a 6 from 49 game). Much shorter odds but this will of course result in more rollover jackpots, likely to see jackpots up to 70 million Euros, which attracts more ticket sales. The larger number of smaller prize tiers will provide for an overall chance of a prize of 1 in 24. Ticket prices are €1.50 in the UK, and 2 Euros in France and Spain. The Euro Millions Base Premiums:
“Hot” & “Cold” Lottery Numbers It's a popular theory that lottery balls have their own little brains, and very good memories. No, really! Why else would so many so called 'systems' be based on previous lottery results..? No, don't be skeptical. It's not because otherwise they wouldn't have a magical 'mathematical' system to sell you. They genuinely believe past results affect future results - I know, bizarre isn't it! Stranger still is the system sellers often have opposing or even self contradicting views. Ever heard of hot lottery numbers, or cold lottery numbers? Don't worry, it's nothing clever. One Better says that because certain lottery numbers have been drawn a 'lot' they are more likely to be drawn again - hot lottery numbers. Therefore you should pick those numbers. The other camp says cold lottery numbers haven't been drawn for a while, therefore they are 'due' to be drawn. Therefore you should pick those numbers! Of course, there are also the confused campers in between who claim the exact opposites too. Hot lotto numbers have been drawn a lot therefore they won't come up again! Consign the whole bunch of charlatans to the 'waste of space' file! There is only one possible basis for claiming certain numbers are more or less likely to be drawn. And that's if you believe that certain imperfections exist within the balls or draw machines. And that those imperfections make a ball more or less likely to appear...Sounds almost plausible until you add some common sense to it. Sure, imperfections are feasible, despite the organisers utmost attempts to ensure every draw is totally random of course... But we're talking ridiculous microscopic imperfections here, aren't we? (There's a player that will tell you to pick 38 for example because it has more paint on the ball than number 1) Just consider for a moment other minute factors that could affect the draw. What about temperature within the studio on the day? Or atmospheric pressure, a nearby storm, a full moon or a low tide! What about mechanical wearing of the machine over time. What about the position of the moon - hey, it does affect the tides after all! Even if you had enough data to track the factors that DON'T change - which alone would take many thousands of draws - what do you do when they change the draw machine or ball sets. Many draws use multiple sets of balls and different machines, not even determined until the draw! Oh, it gets worse still. What if a thousand people are using the same system or piece of 'analysis' software as you? Does that not mean they are likely to be picking the same numbers as you? So if down to purely random chance you do win the jackpot picking hot and cold lottery numbers - what's left for you after a thousand way split!? The only wise conclusion from all this is that any system that claims to improve your chances by analyzing previous draws - is just a big fat waste of time! Save your money, and spend it on more solid way to improve your chances of winning - play more combos in one draw. Number 38 in the UK Lotto Funny story to share with you - If you've read the UK papers or on the net recently, you'd be forgiven for thinking the UK Lotto have just given you the best story ever! Because an official report from really clever mathematicians has concluded the number 38 is far more likely to be drawn than any other number. That does amazing things for your jackpot chances... if it were true of course. One of the observed 'anomalies' was that the number 38 had been drawn 107 times - 14 times more than the next most-drawn ball. Astounding the casual observer might think. Perfectly normal I say. If you actually look at the recommendation from the report, you'll see the mathematicians made the same observation. They found a less than likely result, so suggested that the number 38 balls be examined to reassure the public that the result were truly random. It's not clear if an examination of the balls was performed, but to be on the safe side it's extremely likely! And a UK Lotto spokesman has now, correctly, confirmed the observation to be consistent with a random draw. But of course, that doesn't make an interesting newspaper story! So should you pick 38? Not anymore! And here's why:- Firstly, because there is no reason to believe 38 is more likely to be drawn in future. It's perfectly possible (only unlikely) that it may not appear at all for another 500 draws or years. Secondly, now that millions of UK Lotto players have read how 38 is far more likely to be drawn, imagine what will happen if 38 is drawn. Yup, it's now very likely any jackpot from a line containing the number 38 will be won by thousands of people. All sharing the prize. All very disappointed at having won the smallest jackpot in history!! So play wisely instead: increase your chances by playing more combos and aim to avoid commonly picked combinations. Play on the big jackpots, save your money to play on these. For 50 cents, you get one chance to win a million or two. Prices to Play: You get 5 times more chances to win at totoloto 0,40€ x 5 = 2,00€ (the price of Euromillion), plus 5 ½ times more probability of winning (76,000,000 / 14,000,000). Joker is 0,75€ for a 1 / 9,999,999 chance. Although chances are better for winning Joker (less almost 10,000,000 combinations), cost wise, you are better off placing your bet on more multiple bets than on the joker. Now it all depends on the jackpot at the moment. If the jackpot is higher for joker, you may as well place your bet on the joker because the odds are better. Another advantage of joker, if you play online, you can choose the available numbers.
5 Top Tips To Win More With Any Lottery Here are 5 top tips to bear in mind next time you complete your lottery slip. They won't increase your CHANCES of winning - because ONLY more entries can do that. BUT they can significantly increase the AMOUNT you win when your numbers do come up. How? Because all 5 lottery tips are based on avoiding the way a lot of other people pick their numbers. If you pick lottery numbers the same way as most people do, then when you hit the jackpot, you share that prize with everybody else who picked the same numbers. That can turn a jackpot pool of millions into a prize of just thousands! It happens all too often - so please don't let it happen to you. Here's those quick tips for making sure that your lottery jackpot is the life changing sum you are looking for: • Don't pick numbers that have already won, especially not from recent draws. Many players believe that winnings numbers are somehow lucky and therefore more likely to come up. Of course that isn't true, but a lot of people do it. • Don't pick numbers based on an arithmetic sequences, such as 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, or 01, 11, 21, 31, 41, 49. People like number patterns - you would be stunned at how many people pick this way every single week. • Don't pick numbers according to a 'tip' service. Just imagine how many other people will use the same numbers! • Don't pick numbers purely according to family birthdays. Enormous numbers of lottery players choose the day of the birthday of family members when selecting lottery numbers. But there are only 31 days at most in a month - which means an awful lot of people pick all their numbers in that range. • Don't make a pattern on your playslip. Diagonal or straight lines in any direction, star shapes, boxes, zig-zags etc. You might think who else would do that? The answer is anywhere from tens of people to tens of THOUSANDS of people! The easiest, fastest way to pick better lottery numbers, is to pick them totally at random. So pull scraps of paper out of a bag. It won't guarantee NOT picking a 'bad' set of numbers, but at least there's a good chance you won't be sharing your lottery millions with a hundred other 'lucky' winners. Your Lottery Odds and The Fastest, No Cost Way To Radically Improve Them If I had a lottery ticket for every time I've heard "well I play the Mega Millions lottery because the jackpot is so much bigger"... OK, in my head I'm thinking "but don't you know you have 10 times less chance of winning?"... I do try to be polite about it. Fact is, lottery organizers love creating games with very long odds. Why? Because it means more rollover jackpots. Which means jackpots which grab newspaper headlines. Which generates more interest and higher ticket sales. But what's more important -- the media profile of your chosen game? Or your odds of winning the lottery? Here's a quick reminder of what lottery odds look like. A standard 6 balls from 49 lottery gives you about a 1 in 14 million chance of winning for each ticket. Long odds yes, but hey this is a lottery! But just hang on a second... A typical Power Ball type draw is normally 5 balls plus a bonus ball. That may sound easier to win, but it's actually so much harder it hurts! Take the U.S. Power Ball, that's 5 balls from 53 followed by 1 ball from 42 -- fact is your odds are now around 1 in 120 million for the jackpot. That means you have to buy TEN times as many tickets just to have the same chance of winning! How about EuroMillions? It may at first sound harder to win, but it's actually easier! The Euro game is 5 from 50 plus 2 from 9. But that's actually a 1 in 76 million chance, almost twice as easy to win as the U.S. Power Ball. The U.S. MegaMillions is far worse. 5 from 56, plus 1 from 46 -- that gives you astounding odds of 1 in 175 million! There's also a smaller reason to be concerned at big rollovers. If a lot more people play there's a greater chance of multiple winners, which means sharing that enormous jackpot that was harder to win in the first place! So are power ball type draws just designed to confuse players about lottery odds? Maybe -- but I'll leave that one for the conspiracy theorists. Let's just concentrate on improving your chances of winning the jackpot shall we! Here's the short, sharp advice for playing more wisely... Play the game which gives you the best chance of winning a life changing sum of money. Yes, 100 million does look great fun, but would it make your life any different to winning 10 million? Of course not. So why settle for 10 times less chance of actually winning! So if you play a power ball type draw, the fastest, cheapest, most effective way you can boost your lottery chances right now... is to change the game you are playing. Do Your Lottery Odds Improve The More You Play? • If I have played 500 different combinations already in the past, have my odds of winning the lottery in future improved..? [A] In short, NO. They really haven't. And here's why. The fact is that all of those 500 combinations are still available. Just because they have already been drawn does not mean they cannot be drawn again. It doesn't even mean they are less likely to be drawn this week. It may seem almost logical that once a combination has been drawn that it can't happen again for ages - but why would we think that? The balls have no memory, they don't know what was drawn before? If you think about it, the balls don't even know they mean numbers and jackpots to us do they? They are just a ball bouncing around in a machine! "Hey, Ball No.1, move over - you got drawn last week, I want to pop out this week!" - Ball No.23 Once you come to realize that each combination has exactly the same chance of being drawn every week, you become a much wiser player. You don't fall for any silly lottery 'systems' that claim to improve your odds by analysing past results. Are My Chances Of Winning Better If I Play Less Often..? Your chances of winning the Lotto are normally about 1 in 14 million (as it's a 6 from 49 game). I've heard it's better to play more entries in one draw, but if you buy 1 entry for 4 weeks, aren't your chances exactly the same 4 in 14 million? [A] Your figures are not quite right. If you play once a week for 4 weeks the probability is not 4 in 13 million, it's actually slightly less than that. Think of it this way. If you played the lottery once a week for 13 million weeks, would you be guaranteed to win the jackpot? The answer is of course no, because you still only have a 1 in 13 million chance in EACH draw. So it's perfectly possible to play 13 million times and never win. Alternatively if you played 13 million lines in one game, you would definitely win. If you think in terms of dice it's much easier to get your head around. The prize is €1 million - which would you rather bet on:- a) roll the dice 6 times and pick 1 number each time, or b) pick 6 numbers and roll the dice once, or c) are they the same thing..? I think you'd probably take b) Here's The More Complicated Explanation... Mathematically speaking, if you're calculating independent events you multiply, for dependent events you add. Lottery draws are of course independent events as the results of this weeks draw are not in any way affected by last weeks results. So to work out the chances of winning in any of the 4 weekly draws, you need to work out the probability of winning in each draw and then add them together. Technically you would also be interested in adding on the chances of winning in more than 1 draw (i.e. lose, lose, win, win etc), but it doesn't make much difference to your chances (just to your bank balance!). Boost Your Chances Of Winning Bit! The bottom line is that your chances are marginally better if you play the same total number of entries but play them in less draws. So for no extra outlay you get a better chance. The effect is greater the larger your number of entries. Missing the point Another method employed by lottery strategists is that of the near miss. If you chose, say 07-... , and the numbers selected are 06-10-16-26-31-42, then it's claimed that you have come close. Fact is, in the lottery, a 'near miss' is as good as a mile. Psychologists understand the importance of the near miss - it gives people hope to bet again. This is what the lottery people want, to create false hopes. It’s incredible how the lottery people get away with so much of our money. That is why more and more I believe you are better off playing casino games, especially those online. Where else are you going to get bonus for signing up? Did your local casino ever “Give” you 2,000 euros? Haha, maybe, just maybe they offered you a snack after losing thousand’s of Euros. Think about it… |
