New national lottery. AIBU to think its all a set up?

[amazonqueen]

We have been doing the lottery since it has started . Never won anything above a few £10s very widely spread out .
Now that the numbers have changed, and the price increased to £ 2 per go ,there is even less chance of winning but every week we have 'won' a free lucky dip go. None of these have resulted in anything further.but we think its strange that these lucky dips have come around so often. Which leads us to think tht maybe its all a set up and 'they' already know which ticket is to win.

We are disheartened and can see that these changes have decreased any chance of winning. Are we being unreasonable to stop playing altogether after so many years?

[AgentZigzag]

I've always wondered the same, but there probably isn't anything going on, you haven't won because the odds are so crap.

I used to do it every week and I think you get into the mindset (which they play on) that your numbers will come up the first week you stop

Open up a bank account and start putting in the money you would have spent on the lottery, you'll be loaded before long.

[LumpySpaceCow]

Is that doing it online? I have done it for years and never won a free lucky dip when it initially changed I did win a couple of 25 quids which was nice but no, I don't think YABU. The changes must work in their favour.

[bittapitta]

Lucky dip is if you get two numbers. So how can they set that up? It's pretty likely odds. The odds of winning the jackpot have gone down though.

[bittapitta]

Great blog post from earlier this year about the changes. Explains that you're more likely to win smaller prizes/lucky dip but less likely to win big.
diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/ten-more-balls.html?m=1

[Hobbes8]

I think the changes are engineered to create bigger jackpots. they've increased the numbers from 1-49 to 1-59 so you're less likely to have picked the winning numbers, so fewer jackpot winners means more rollovers.

You only need to match 2 numbers to get a lucky dip, so that happens much more frequently than matching 3 numbers to win actual cash. It doesn't matter to the lottery as it costs them nothing to give out free tickets, which almost certainly won't win.

I play but only with lucky dip numbers. I get the argument that if you stopped playing your numbers you'd be gutted if they came up, but surely you'd never check them?

[Hobbes8]

lumpyspacecow I think the lucky dip thing has only been running a few weeks. I only know about it because my mother in law was going on holiday and couldn't play her numbers in advance because they were changing the rules in the middle of her holiday.