The internet is a wonderful thing. You can now do all kinds of things from the comfort of your own home whenever you used to have to go to a shop or put something within 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 internet for help. I was surprised at what I found!
There was as I expected the ability 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 within the rain going to the shop.
In fact they take care of all of it – take the money through your checking account for the subscriptions automatically so that you never miss a draw, check your numbers for you without fail and pay you any winnings!
Paying you your winnings probably will not sound like a big issue – but considering that the UK National Lottery began in 1994, unclaimed prizes have accumulated to more than Ł650 million [$1.17 billion]!
Checking that your particular numbers have won is probably the most useful service of all – because if you don’t claim it you do not get it!
A good service – convenient, easy and also fun.
Then several months ago I found the next phase on – an online gambling agency 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 through an economics degree might! But I went throughout 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 so that each of the 49 numbers is covered and then with 5 other randomly generated numbers they generate 44 separate lines.
This is clever – it means that there are actually 44 entries and effectively the syndicate only has to match 5 of the 6 lottery draw numbers to win the jackpot – because the sixth ball will always match.
But it’s 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 then of course the additional 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 would 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 case you are not knowledgeable about this it’s as big as many of the multi-state lotteries within the USA. Why? Because 9 countries in Europe are playing it! And a lot more want to join in!
It is the largest tax-free lump-sum national lottery worldwide!
If you were watching the news earlier in 2006 you may have seen that it rose to an amazing Ł125m rollover (yes – that is in GBP not dollars or euros!)
Being a part on this lottery syndicate increases your chances of winning by an incredible 3600%! Increasing 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 of how the net might make it simpler for you.