Is the Lotto too hard to win ?

A tax for idiots

Jackpot last won at the start of June, been at €19m since September. I can see people turning away from it if it's only won a coupe of times a year. At least the Euromillions gives away the money to the next tier with winners after a certain time.

Or prize bonds.

Why has nobody ever called for an investigation into the Daily Millions? It was last won on 05 November, but with two draws seven days a week, that is probably more draws with no winners than the main Lotto. I wouldn't be surprised if there are far worse runs than that.

Of course the explanation is simple, not enough tickets bought to have winners more often. But a conspiracy theorist like that TD would have a field day with the stats.

I've yet to win, so yes. But then again I haven't bought a ticket since it was privatized. Haven't won a bob on the prize bonds as well.

Im not playing anymore. It annoys me that the jackpot is capped where i think that with all the extra people having a go it should be going through the roof.

It seems to me like they added the extra numbers to create more rollovers and bigger jackpots without having to put any extra in. Pure cream for the owners.

The Probability

The Irish lotto now has 47 numbers. There are 10.7 million potential combinations of 6 numbers from that.

Let's assume there are 500,000 lines played around the country per draw. That means in any given draw there is a 4.67% chance of someone picking the winning numbers. Or, to put it another way, there is a 95.33% chance that nobody does.

In order to calculate the chances of nobody winning 2 draws in a row we square that probability which gives 90.87%.

In order to calculate the chances of nobody winning 46 draws in a row we put it to the power of 46 which gives 11.07%

I made the assumption of 500,000 lines per draw because I don't know how many actually play each draw. However if we change that we change the overall probability so let's try a few other values to show how the overall chances of no winner in 46 draws will change:

So we can see that how likely or not this is depends entirely on how many are playing the lotto. In the extreme case of only 100,000 lines being played per draw it's actually more probable that nobody would win in 46 draws. When we go up to a million lines it becomes a roughly 1 in a 100 chance that this would happen - improbable but not impossible.

That suggestion is up there with the one to only change clocks once a year.

Why he wasn't dropped when two of the same numbers were drawn from the drum is beyond me

Problem is too many combinations. This means that it's too hard to win. 10 million plus combinations means on average even if a large percentage of adults played you would still have it won once every 4-5 draws on average

What happens is a large amount of people decide it's not worth playing until the jackpot is 3-4 million, this means less plays. This feeds players to then push this number out to 5, then 6, then 10 then 15 million etc.

When you lose the habit of playing you stop playing. I do not even look to see what the jackpot is worth any longer. I never see people filling out a slip any longer. It's too expensive as well with Is it six euro now for two line with lotto plus.

I'm sure you could buy enough lines to pretty much guarantee a win and still be in profit, I know every combination is as likely as any other combination, but the chances of 6 consecutive numbers is basically zero, or 6 consecutive odd numbers, or consecutive multiples of three, or any repeating gaps, etc, etc, and then you eliminate combinations with 5 consecutive numbers, etc, ...

the odds of winning are 1 in 10,737,573. jackpot is €19,060,800 which would buy 9,530,400 tickets, you only have to eliminate 1,207,173 improbable combinations, or like 1 in 9 of all possible combinations....

maybe it's not so easy after all...

If there were fewer numbers, it would encourage millionaires to "buy" the Lotto.

With 47 numbers, that can't happen, but 47 is not going to make the Lotto "unwinnable" by random luck either. Every draw stands on its own, with no influence from what happened in previous draws. The same odds apply in the next draw whether it was won every week for 10 weeks, or not won any week for 50 weeks. The only variable is the number of tickets bought.

The UK is 6 numbers out of 59, and that seems to be around the sweet spot for the number of tickets in their draws. Plenty of rollovers, but plenty of jackpot winners every year. And that is what has been the case in Ireland for years as well.

You are right. Nobody knew about it until now, and millions of extra tickets will be bought chasing the big money.