Lotto odds

daggeredge

I think this might fit under here as it's a television gamey thing, but mods feel free to move

I always play quik pick cos I don't like filling in the sheet thing...neway,

Just wondering were there any statistics ever taking on the likelyhood of winning with a "Quik pick" as opposed to a constant set of numbers (birthdays,etc - play these numbers all the time)

Don't suppose they put "quick pickers" who won as a % of total winners since it was introduced anywhere...would imagine it would be very low

I'd imagine the odds of winning decrease dramatically with quik pick as it would be kind of an exponential situation

(odds of winning) mutiply by (odds of getting those numbers in a quik pick)

And I know the odds of winning aren't great anyway
6 numbers randomnly drawn with a bonus number !

thought it was interesting.....

Bacchus

The odds of winning the lotto using quick pick are the exact same as using the same set of numbers every week. Each number still has the same chance of turning up each week. Therefore it does not matter in the slightest whether you keep the same numbers or use different ones every week.
Dont know of any statistics to back this up but any statistic based on a random drawing of numbers is itself going to be random.
Hope that helps.
Personally I'd stick to the same numbers each week (if I played that is). There's probably something more satisfying in knowing that 'your' numbers won, not some random numbers a computer picked out.

Micheal Wittman

I remember the lotto used to be out of 35 numbers I think and then they upped it to 42.

My Maths teacher pointed out when we where doing Probability, that the max number of combinations posssible (6 out of 35) was something like (I cant remember the exact amount so I'll guess) 35,000 combinations. This ment that if u were willing to buy a lotto ticket for every posible combination - you would definatly win!

Even though it would have cost a couple of 100,000 pounds, you would still make a profit out of a 1 M pound jackpot say.

The lotto ppl soon realised this and uped the numbers from 35 to 42 and so making it unprofitable to try. Ah well

LizardKing

I use a combination of same set of numbers and quickpick ... its not been too successful so far

BaZmO*

If anybody is interested, they way to work out the odds for Lotto is as follows....

(42x41x40x39x38x37) ÷ (1x2x3x4x5x6) = 5,245,786


Great odds eh??

Genghis

Micheal Wittman wrote:

The lotto ppl soon realised this and uped the numbers from 35 to 42 and so making it unprofitable to try. Ah well

... after a syndicate did just what you outlined above. The bonus ball also added another dimension in that you cannot win so much of the total prize now with 'just six numbers', as some of the prize fund is held back for getting '6 out of 7' or '5 out of 7' numbers. IIRC the syndicate that pulled it off not only took the jackpot, but also a large proportion of the 5 numbers, 4 numbers prizes too.

I can't seem to find a link to the story of the syndicate - it must be documented somewhere on the web. At this stage, a story like that has probably gained a little in the way of Urban Legends.

LizardKing

there was a huge syndicate(~298 members) which won the €200000 lotto plus 2 recently
(also got some match 5,4 and 3 .. think they got 32 scratch cards too) however they only came out with ~€700 ... not that great

ShaneOC

Genghis wrote:

IIRC the syndicate that pulled it off not only took the jackpot, but also a large proportion of the 5 numbers, 4 numbers prizes too.

The weekend that the syndicate struck was one of the bonus weekends. The lottery were guaranteeing £100 for everyone who matched 4 numbers. The syndicate did not manage to get every possible combination but they did get the jackpot as well as a few match 5's and loads of match 4's. I don't think it was ever revealed how much they made.

Cabaal

Wasn't there a group of people back in the 80's who got together and basically bought a ticket for ever combination they could come up with (since then the Lotto have added extra numbers to stop this from happening)

sceptre

Micheal Wittman wrote:

My Maths teacher pointed out when we where doing Probability, that the max number of combinations posssible (6 out of 35) was something like (I cant remember the exact amount so I'll guess) 35,000 combinations. This ment that if u were willing to buy a lotto ticket for every posible combination - you would definatly win!

I don't mean to be blunty blunt but if you buy up all the combinations obviously you're going to win:).

Originally it was 36 numbers (pick 6). Hence, jackpot odds were (36.35.34.33.32.31)/(1.2.3.4.5.6) = 1.9 million. Tickets were 50p each so a complete set would cost close to a million. Hence by buying all the combinations, any jackpot over a million would result in a profit if it was the only winner. You'd really want a 2 or 3 million jackpot to be fairly sure of making money. What happened on the weekend (around 1992/93) where that team bought up as many combinations as they could (they only got about two-thirds of the way there) was that the Lotto had offered a bank holiday wekend special of £100 for every match four (as opposed to the usual pittance of a few quid). It was this that made buying up all the combinations really profitable at the time as there was a guarantee that most of the capital would be returned by this regardless of the number of jackpot winners or match-5 winners (keeping in mind that you can only win once per ticket even if you've eight winners on that ticket). Then the jackpot win would be pretty much pure profit irrespective of how many people they had to share it with (none as it happens if I remember rightly)


I don't tend to do the Lotto. Being cynical I tend to regard it as a stupid tax. Even blowing a few hundred quid up my nose would get me a better return. I used to put a few quid on the thing in the bookies when I was in third year in college (even while aware of the poisson distribution of the results though choosing to ignore it) in preference to getting a part-time job. Made a few grand in a few months so I was happy at the time. I think I've bought under 10 actual Lotto tickets ever. And I've never won a bean on any of those.

BaZmO*

Cabaal wrote:

Wasn't there a group of people back in the 80's who got together and basically bought a ticket for ever combination they could come up with (since then the Lotto have added extra numbers to stop this from happening)

AFAIK the Irish Lotto started in the nineties, 92 I think?
And the English one a few years later.

There was a documentary ages ago about the Irish Syndicate that won back in the nineties, back in the days when the there were only 36 numbers which gave odds of 1,947,792.
Now considering that you got two panels for every pound spent at the time you only needed to spend £973,896 to cover every possibility. I think there were certain combinations that they didn't use, like 1,2,3,4,5,6 because probablity would suggest that those numbers wouldn't come out in that order, but they were of course taking a chance with this.
They also made sure that they they done it on one of the weeks that the Lottery added to the jackpot.
They would've of also won on the smaller combinations, i.e. Match 5's, Match 4's etc.
Apparently the hardest part was getting enough shopkeepers to let them use their machines to enter all the numbers and of course the biggest risk of all was that somebody would share in the jackpot, luckily for them, the week they won nobody else did!!

B.

BaZmO*

Got in there before me Sceptre!!!

(keeping in mind that you can only win once per ticket even if you've eight winners on that ticket).

You sure about this?

AFAIK you win per panel and not per ticket??

sceptre

BaZmO* wrote:

You sure about this?

AFAIK you win per panel and not per ticket??

Am I heck as like. AFAIK this is the rule (or at least used to be) but I don't have an old ticket so it'd be nice if someone checked (should be written on the back).

They were definitely taking a chance with not playing the likes of 1,2,3,4,5, 6. Just as likely to come up as any other random combination of numbers.

BaZmO*

sceptre wrote:

Am I heck as like. AFAIK this is the rule (or at least used to be) but I don't have an old ticket so it'd be nice if someone checked (should be written on the back).

I used to work in a shop that done Lotto and I seem to remember people claiming more than on prize on a ticket. It was a looong looong time ago so I can't be 100% on that though!!

LizardKing

I think the rule is if you get paid only for the highest winning jackpot e.g if you had 5 numbers , you get paid for the 5 number jackpot not the 3+bonus, 4 and 5 number jackpot ... that is all AFAIK

ixoy

sceptre wrote:

They were definitely taking a chance with not playing the likes of 1,2,3,4,5, 6. Just as likely to come up as any other random combination of numbers.

You know this is what's always stopped me playing Lotto. My mind would insist I play a number sequence like that and it'd drive home the real chances of picking the correct actual sequences. More disparate sequences are - obviously enough - more common. I wonder if 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 has ever come up anywhere?

BaZmO*

ixoy wrote:

I wonder if 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 has ever come up anywhere?

I don't think it has, but it's the most popular combination that people do believe it or not!

quarryman

I remember reading somewhere about a method for selecting the least likely chosen numbers. Rather than increasing your chances of winning (which no method can do) it made it more likely that if you did win, that you would have more money to yourself.

Patterns such as X's on the lottoslip or columns are used quite often. The trick is to select a set that no one else will. Numbers after 30/31 are good since they don't correspond to birthdays etc....

Blisterman

How did those people fill out all the tickets? Did they use a computer?

BaZmO*

Blisterman wrote:

How did those people fill out all the tickets? Did they use a computer?

By hand. Then they rounded up a few compliant newsagents that were willing to let them commandeer their Lotto machines for a couple of days.

LFCFan

I seem to remember a spokeperson for The National Lottery saying that if 1,2,3,4,5,6 ever came up, there'd be around 1,500(Could be higher) winners as that's the average amount of tickets every week that do those numbers. So if the Lotto was the minimum that week you'd only win Eur900. How sick would you be to win the lotto and only come out with Eur900

de_shadow

BaZmO* wrote:

AFAIK you win per panel and not per ticket??

I play the lotto quite abit no big win yet but i have gotten more than one win on a ticket it has happened with quick picks where two lines have same numbers i.e. you win by line not by ticket

Flukey

The possible combinations can be worked out easily if you have a Spreadsheet program, like Microsoft Excel. In a blank cell type:

=combin(42,6)

This gives 5,245,786 which is the amount of different possible combinations of 6 numbers from 42.

Another interesting one is the amount of permutations possible:

=permut(42,6)

This gives 3,776,965,920. That is not only the 6 numbers that come out but also predicting the sequence. So 1,5,3,7,40,36 is deemed different than 5,40,7,36,3,1.

John R

The reason they changed the lotto to include more numbers and the bonus ball was to remove the likelihood of profiting from purchasing every combination.
Here is a website where someone has worked out the figures of blanket buying on the UK lottery.

Chonaic

BaZmO* wrote:

If anybody is interested, they way to work out the odds for Lotto is as follows....

(42x41x40x39x38x37) ÷ (1x2x3x4x5x6) = 5,245,786


Great odds eh??

from now on im doin the lotto down the bookies.

Chonaic

Is there a website for the irish lottery results from '92 til present day?
I am goin to make a database and calculate the most prominent balls.

BaZmO*

Chonaic wrote:

Is there a website for the irish lottery results from '92 til present day?
I am goin to make a database and calculate the most prominent balls.

http://www.lotto.ie/results_2_frames.htm

daggeredge

of course that only gives a list of how many times each ball came out
It doesn't give the numbers or the combinations!!!!

BaZmO*

daggeredge wrote:

of course that only gives a list of how many times each ball came out
It doesn't give the numbers or the combinations!!!!

Yeah but he said that he's....

goin to make a database and calculate the most prominent balls

....so is that not what he wanted??

scargill

i've got prominent balls if thats any help to you (couldn't resist).

but anywhooo......
http://www.lottery.co.uk/genhtml/Default.asp?page=stats

BaZmO*

scargill wrote:

i've got prominent balls if thats any help to you (couldn't resist).

but anywhooo......
http://www.lottery.co.uk/genhtml/Default.asp?page=stats

That's the UK Lotto.

scargill

yes i know - just thought i share it.

doesn't really tell you anything. just because a particular number came out more frequently in the past doesn't mean its chances of coming out again are any better than any other ball. the balls don't know how often they are coming out !!

over a billion draws the numbers will be pretty much even. the descrepencies between the balls are exaggerated because there are _relatively_ few draws historically to look at.

if after the first draw the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 came out then historically it would say that that numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 came out 100% of the time !

can't see any point of counting the frequency really

Flukey

from now on im doin the lotto down the bookies

The only problem is that they won't let you pay on six numbers!

Flukey

I actually have some standard numbers and some quick picks each week, for a bit of variety. No luck tonight, but I did win a scratch card on Wednesday night and €12 last week. I have never done better than 4 numbers, though a syndicate I ran for a while did 4 and the bonus number once, which got us £100 then.

sceptre

Flukey wrote:

The only problem is that they won't let you pay on six numbers!

Oh most of them should let you play on six numbers. They've usually got a 50 grand payout limit though so the likely return isn't worth the risk (not that the likely return on the actual lotto is worth the risk either) and the actual return in the event of a win makes the real lotto a better choice if playing for all six or throwing your money away are games you like to play. And even ignoring the payout limit, the bookie odds on 6 from 42 are set to only about 250k/1 in any case. Return on up to 4 from 42 are much nicer.

Healio

Well im tipping the 8 ball to have a run pretty soon, last time out was in march, and its the least drawn ball since '94.

whosurpaddy

ive definitely seen a docu about a syndicate doing whats already been described , but in the states. this was on tv years ago so its a fairly hazy memory. but i think it was the massive powerball lottery. they had a couple dozen shops running round the clock as soon as they closed, and still didnt get all the possible combinations. they won the jackpot though afaik.

anyone know what prohibits this in america nowadays, with the massive jackpots they have over there.

John R

whosurpaddy wrote:

ive definitely seen a docu about a syndicate doing whats already been described , but in the states. this was on tv years ago so its a fairly hazy memory. but i think it was the massive powerball lottery. they had a couple dozen shops running round the clock as soon as they closed, and still didnt get all the possible combinations. they won the jackpot though afaik.

anyone know what prohibits this in america nowadays, with the massive jackpots they have over there.

The odds of breaking even from this are low now with the increased number of balls and the bonus ball.

whosurpaddy

i was talking about the states. as in america. have they introduced bonus balls et all?