Is The Lottery For Losers?

[Pip Madeley]

Sales of the National Lottery Saturday and Wednesday draws have been declining for many years, but millions of us put money on the recent Euromillions £100m draw with 500 tickets sold every second prior to the draw...

Do you play the lottery? Did you buy a Euromillions ticket in spite of the fact that the odds were 76 million to 1 against? Have you always played the lottery? What makes you buy a ticket? Did you stop playing it for a reason? Do you see it as a way to support causes (lottery funding)? How many tickets have you bought at once?

And what would you do if you won the jackpot? Have you ever won anything, come to that?

[Captain Tancredi]

My dad does a line for me and has done since it started- it came up with four numbers once about six or seven years ago.

These days I just do the bonus ball in work- it's come up for me twice in a year and a half, and all the money stays in the department so nobody else makes a profit out of us doing it. And £48 profit is a nice unexpected bonus every so often.

[Pip Madeley]

My dad does a line for me

The safe way to take drugs?

I don't play the lottery, I think it's a mugs game, but I do confess I buy the odd scratchcard when I feel like it. The odds are much better and I've won a tenner a few times. People do the bonus ball at our work too, and it rolled over to £100 which one of the solicitors won, but I still don't take part...

[Rob McCow]

Statistically, you've got as much chance of finding £1,000,000 as you have of winning the lottery.

I know I made that up and it's not true, but it is entirely correct and factual.

[Captain Tancredi]

The safe way to take drugs?

Oh, that's nothing. My grandma used to do the pools- six lines a week for thirty years.

[Pip Madeley]

If you do too many lines you'll end up like this:

[Si Hunt]

I don't play the lottery, I think it's a mugs game, but I do confess I buy the odd scratchcard when I feel like it.

See, I get the lottery, sort of, because they can't rig it. And I can see why people think they might win*. But I honestly don't understand why anyone would buy a scratch card because... THEY CHOOSE WHAT'S ON IT! And they pay out! Why would they make them winning cards?! Ok, I know some are, but then it'd be suspicious if no-one ever won anything, and in general... well, let's play a game. I'll write down a number on this bit of paper, you buy it off me and I'll pay you the number of pounds I've written on the card. Ok. The number I've written is not very much? Well, of course it isn't! That's what I'm going to give you and I'd have to be a MORON to make it a lot, seeing as how I picked it.

Unless you believe that the amounts on the cards are regulated. This from the company that actually lost the license once then suddenly (upon the quiet shuffling of notes in back pockets) GOT IT BACK.

But anyway. * The genius of the lottery is two-fold. One, it's a game where everyone wins in a sense. People will always be happy playing for a chance of the big win, yet the person organising it will always win. You could do it anywhere - get ten friends to pay you a quid and promise to give a random one of them half the total proceeds. They'd do it every week, each happy to pay £1 for the chance of winning £5, and you'd always make five pounds out of nothing.

The second reason it's genius is related to mathematics, as anyone who has done probabilities will know. It's deceptive. 'All the combinations of six number's always sounds like a small selection, yet it's massive because the human brain can't quite comprehend the different possibilities of all six numbers WITH EACH OF THE OTHERS. Because the amount of probabilities is impossible to visualise, you always imagine there are less than there are. The example I always give is of a beach with fourteen million pebbles on it - you pick one, and I'll pick one. If we pick the same one, I'll give you all my money. Want to play? No, of course you don't because the chance of us picking the same rock out of fourteen million stones is just... well, it's nothing. You may as well call a random telephone number and hope to speak to Madonna. But no-one ever does that do they?

So the lottery is genius, because no-one will ever, ever win in the same way that no-one will ever, ever get run over by three cars on the same day in Kansas. I'm sure that actually happens occasionally, but it's too remote to ever warrant serious chance of it happening, let alone bet money on it.

Si.

[Dave Lewis]

Back in the autumn of 1994, I picked six numbers that were so utterly and amazingly perfect that I knew immediately that they would win be the National Lottery jackpot.

I don't think I ever even won a tenner - the first week I missed it I was convinced they would come up... but they never did. I think I last played the lottery in about 1998, although (I think) my dear mother puts a quid on my numbers along with her own. But perhaps even she has given up on them now.

The Lottery is - like all gambling - purely about the excitement of anticipation. But like all gambling, the anticipation is hardly, if ever, worth it once the balls have dropped.*

*That may be why the Lottery is still going - just to see if Alan Deddicott repeats the immortal line, "Let's hope your balls are in the machine tonight."

[Wayne]

Well i'm a loser......

I spend £2 a week on the Lottery (a quid for the midweek & a quid for Saturday's). Foolishly, it all started by having the same numbers every week) but i've only ever won a small few tenners in however many years it's been.
On the plus side - At least i'll be able to stop when i get to 49.

[Milky Tears]

It's for fools and doddery pensioners.

[Jamie McCrimmon]

Well i'm a loser......

I spend £2 a week on the Lottery (a quid for the midweek & a quid for Saturday's). Foolishly, it all started by having the same numbers every week) but i've only ever won a small few tenners in however many years it's been.
On the plus side - At least i'll be able to stop when i get to 49.

I'm the same, I played once and inadvertently memorised my numbers and then felt unable to stop in case tey came up and I hadn't bought a ticket. The most stupid thing is that I don't even hakner after a millionaire lifestyle, if I did win I'd pay off my mortgage and give the rest to Greenpeace.

[Si Hunt]

It always makes me laugh when people say "I can't stop because my numbers might come up" when it's actually very difficult to find out what the lottery numbers are unless you deliberately look them up or tune in to the TV show. Of course, I still put £1 a week in because our old work syndicate is still going, and I really WOULD know if they all won a million quid without me.

Si.

[Paul Monk]

I enter occassionally. I agree with Si and his assessment of the ridiculous chances of winning. Hitting the jackpot is insanely unlikely. However, and this is what really fascinates me, it appears that almost every week bar roll overs, someone, somewhere appears to win the jackpot. I say appears because a lot of the time we don't hear about the winners. If I were a conspiracy theorist I would probably have ranted my own head off about cover-ups and fake winners etc. But taken at face value its looks like even though each persons chance of winning is 1 in 14 million someone almost always wins. Which is mad. But this is because the more people that enter the greater chance there is that the jackpot will be won. So maybe those of us that don't do it every week should find it in our hearts to start playing regularly, if only to increase the the likelihood that somebody somewhere will win the jackpot.

Either that or I'm talking complete balls. Its fascinating though.

[SiHart]

I used to work with Camelot when I was running my shop, and certainly back then winners were able to sign a non-disclosure agreement if they won the jackpot, and this would keep their identities secret. I think more and more people do this now, as winners tend to get a lot of hassle from people begging them for money. One of the first winners was someone I sort of knew, who lived up the road from us in Bracknell.

Camelot always struck me as a slightly dodgy choice of company to run it, as they're running a profit from it as well as the money that goes to charity/ the jackpots. There was always the drive from them for us to perform better, to get more people to buy the scratchcards, and get more and more money spent on it- that's why there's all the gimmicks, all the new types of draw- it's to keep the interest in it. Obviously it's failed. In some ways they'd have been better keeping just one draw a week- the jackpots would stay high that way. Now there's the Thunderball draw, the main draw and the Euro Millions and all that and the money that's spent just becomes more widely distributed- I don't think much more actually gets spent on it.
Certainly it seems to me, the days that we had in 1996/97 where the shop would be open until 7pm on a Saturday and the last hour was incredibly busy just for people putting their lottery numbers on are long gone.

Anyway, I don't play the lottery these days. I just sort of stopped. When I had the shop it was easy to put some numbers on and hope for the best, but now it just doesn't register with me. I've even forgotten the regular set of numbers I used to put on each week.

Si xx

[WhiteCrow]

I've been part of 2 syndicates over the years - to be honest all I ever saw was putting money in, and not getting money out. Oddly the twice weekly draw has made me less likely to play.

I know for some it changes peoples lives, but the odds are so remote.

In the book 1984, there's some talk about a lottery system, and how it keeps the proles in line. Somehow the dream and hope of winning is all that's needed to keep people passive.

It's true - provide people with a twice weekly hope of living comfortably for the rest of their lives, and it's surprising what you can sneak past them.

[Wayne]

Regardless of the maths & the sheer odds against winning the jackpot, i think what keeps people playing is the fact that most weeks, (unless it goes to a rollover) somebody somewhere, even if it's a syndicate, does actually win the jackpot. And at the end of the day, nobody really misses a quid or two a week, so despite the odds, people think 'Sod it, you never know'.
Well that's how it is for me anyway.

But yeah, i made the decision not to play any of the others, (Thunderball, Lotto Extra, etc etc...) otherwise you're soon spending a tenner a week or something, & i can't afford that.

[Paul Monk]

Regardless of the maths & the sheer odds against winning the jackpot, i think what keeps people playing is the fact that most weeks, (unless it goes to a rollover) somebody somewhere, even if it's a syndicate, does actually win the jackpot.

Thats what I was getting at earlier. However this will happen less often the fewer people play. If the single odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 14 million then as long as at least 14 million lines are played each with a different combination, one of them will win.

Erm... not sure of my point really.

[Ralph]

Mom Mitchell must be loser because she always plays the lottery

I agree it's not a sure fire way of becoming wealthy... all you need for that is to be chief Executive of a failed bank

[Dirk Gently]

The Wednesday draw killed my weekly playing. I only play when it rolls over.
I did win fairly regularly (£10 - £88) but I've not seen any winnings for a couple of years. But as I say,I'm regularly playing.
And yes, I did play the £100 million draw, there's a lot of people that I could help with money like that.

[WhiteCrow]

For any human being to function on a daily basis, we need some kind of hope to get us through the day.

It used to be that the hope God was watching us was what drove us on. Now it's hope of winning the lottery.

I know some people will claim the lottery will make a return to SOMEONE so maybe faith in the lottery is better placed. However I'd counter that faith and hope in something spiritual, can drive us to become better people, faith and hope in the lottery doesn't, it keeps us in spiritual hibernation.

[Antony Cox]

I only play when it rolls over.

I pity your dog, then...

[Alex]

I'm a part time loser, I tend to play it if I've got a spare quid on me, or if it's a rollover. I think it's just a bit of fun really, and sometimes it's nice to spend half an hour on the tube daydreaming about what you'd do with the money. I never use the same numbers though, just incase my selection ever did come up one week when I didn't play it.

My Step-Brother claimed that did actually happen to him once, and was gutted about it, but I'm not sure if it's actually true. He's a bit of an odd one and for a long while we believed he was running a pub in Thailand, until my Uncle found out it was actually a brothel.

[MacNimon]

Well i'm a loser......

I spend £2 a week on the Lottery (a quid for the midweek & a quid for Saturday's). Foolishly, it all started by having the same numbers every week) but i've only ever won a small few tenners in however many years it's been.
On the plus side - At least i'll be able to stop when i get to 49.

Not long to go now, then....

[Wayne]

Yeah, i've only 3 & a half years left to win the jackpot.