The internet is a wonderful thing. You can now do all sorts of things from the comfort of your own home whenever you used to have to go to a shop or put something in the post.
I now rent my DVDs online and they arrive over the post and I get my weekly groceries delivered to my door having ordered them from my number of favorites online.
The internet makes things convenient. So when I forgot to buy my lottery ticket again and missed out on a small prize, I turned to the net for help. I was surprised at what I found!
There was as I expected the capability to purchase lottery tickets online from the UK’s National Lottery website. Great! No longer did I have to fiddle around with cash or get soaked in the rain going to the shop.
In fact they take good care of everything – take the money through your savings account for the subscriptions automatically to ensure that you never miss a draw, check your numbers for you without fail and pay you any winnings!
Paying you your winnings probably does not sound like a big problem – but considering that the UK National Lottery began in 1994, unclaimed prizes have accumulated to more than Ł650 million [$1.17 billion]!
Checking that the numbers have won is probably the most useful service of all – because in the event that you don’t claim it you don’t get it!
A good service – convenient, easy and also fun.
Then a couple of months ago I found the next step on – an online lottery syndicate system!
Sure – the official national lottery website offers a syndicate management tool – although not like this one.
I looked at it rather sceptically as anyone with an economics degree might! But I went over the numbers to check anyway. I was impressed.
They operate syndicates with 49 members in each. Then they do something clever – they fix among the six numbers in order that each of the 49 numbers is covered and after that with 5 other randomly generated numbers they can make 44 separate lines.
This is clever – it implies that there are 44 entries and effectively the syndicate only must match 5 of the 6 lottery draw numbers to win the jackpot – because the sixth ball will invariably match.
But it is cleverer than that since the syndicate also wins more than the jackpot – another of the 44 lines will win 5 plus the bonus ball and after that of-course the other 42 lines also win by matching 5 numbers! Add all those multiple wins together and divide by the number within the syndicate and you win more than you might have done if you played solo!
In fact your odds of winning increases by 702% in the UK National Lottery Lotto draw!
And they have done the exact same trick with the EuroMillions draw. In the event you are not experienced with this it really is as big as many of the multi-state lotteries within the United States of America. Why? Because 9 countries in Europe are generally playing it! As well as more want to join in!
It really is the biggest tax-free lump-sum national lottery on the globe!
If you were watching the news earlier in 2006 you will have seen which it rose to an amazing Ł125m rollover (yes – that’s in GBP not dollars or euros!)
Being a part on this lottery syndicate increases your probability of winning by a staggering 3600%! Raising the odds of winning any prize to 1 in 10 and it means you may win a prize by matching just one ball!
So next time you are waiting in line to buy your lottery ticket, running the risk of losing it, or forgetting to check whether you’ve won, think about how the internet will make it simpler for you.