Tips & tricks for winning lottery / euro millions?

[ChristineDianaJones]

I try and play the lottery / euro millions when there's are rollovers. I mean it is not worth getting out of bed for a paltry £2m, is it? :)

I was wondering if any members have any techniques that they'd like to share.

I note there's a quadruple roll over in UK Lottery and £84m in the Euro Millions.

Just buy a winning ticket.
Simples!

My father had a complicated spreadsheet that worked out what the least frequently "chosen by players" numbers are - it involved tracking results back over a decade - so that while you couldn't improve your chance of winning, you could increase the chance that if you did win the jackpot, you wouldn't be sharing it with anyone else. Not that he ever bought a ticket, just liked doing the maths!

It's literally pure chance.

Unfortunately @MrsTerryPratchett if you did that and shared it fairly you would only get back about half what you all spent because half the money doesn't go into the prize fund. So the lottery is a particularly bad buy. Better to keep your money.

Don't stand on the balcony with your bowl of tickets and allow yourself to be spooked by a pigeon.

If it was a multiple rollover I believe it's been done. But not worth the bother if you ask me.

On the odd occasions I've bought a lottery ticket I always go for a lucky dip and apart from once winning £80 odd in a works syndicate of 10 and £5 here and there (rarely) I've not won a penny. Nothing worth shouting from the rooftops about, not that I'd do that.

Although, in a world with one lottery machine and one set of balls, you might find that some numbers come out slightly more often than the others purely down to slight faults in the manufacturing process. Back when it started in the 1990s some balls might have had very, very slightly thicker internal seams making them a teeny bit heavier etc).

But I assume that's why right from the beginning they had multiple sets of balls and you never knew in advance which set they were using.

Now they test them to ensure all the balls are the same. (I looked it up on-line and was a bit surprised, given the money involved, that they don't use a new set each time, but I looked it up and apparently they keep the sets locked up and re-use them).

Apparently the ball set used is scheduled on an equal rotation basis. That could make a decent comedy heist movie plot where a Penna and Teller style duo tamper with the next set of balls and "win" 17 million.

Yeah... but that's just...like... your opinion, man.

/s for the terminally hard of thinking

I did my name and won £400. That's my tip. It's the most I've ever won.

Great tip. I might try that. What's your name?

3 vowels 3 consonants

It's not a system. It's just a different random choice to yours

Looking at the newspaper articles it always looks like chubby people always win, it's worth a shot?

Reported the scammer

I put the same lines on set for life every Monday and Thursday
I check the lottery winners online every week and people always seem to win top prize and second prize for this draw.

Trust me I'm waiting on it haha!

Nobody seems to win top prize often enough on the others! Especially thunderball!

I win my money back quite often as you only need two numbers for £5

I don't go for 'big' jackpots

I love spending £2.50 to win £4.60 makes me feel like a top roller!

I do not think every number has equal chance - if that was true, some numbers won't come up time and time again, and other come up less often

Every number does have an equal chance.
But that does not mean every number will get drawn as much as the rest.

You need to educate yourself about statistics OP.

Have you considered getting super rich then buying thousands and thousands of tickets? That would surely have to push the odds up a bit?

Or you could go on one of the ‘woo’ threads on here. I’m sure one of the I can see the dead types can predict the winning numbers.

Or maybe do what that guy on the syndicate did - buy a little shop and wait till somebody has a winning ticket then steal it for yourself.

I do this. Very rare I do a lottery but if I do it’s always a lucky dip. And if I did it regularly it would definitely be a lucky dip. Imagine always putting the same numbers on then them coming up when you’d forgotten/missed a week. Think I’d go crazy.

Tell me you really don’t understand statistics without telling me you don’t understand statistics.

there are however, a couple of ways to maximise win IF your numbers come up.

so, don’t choose popular numbers — as a PP said, avoid 1—31 as that’s birthdays. Definitely avoid 3, 7, 13 — often thought of as lucky numbers. Chose those and you can guarantee to be sharing a win.

also, counterintuitivly if you buy more than one ticket, select only one digit different for each ticket you buy. Eg if you buy 1,2,3,4,5, then your second ticket needs to be 2,3,4,5,6, because if 1,2,3,4,5 is the winning ticket, then the other ticket will also net you a decent prize. There’s a name for this, but I forget. I know a few ppl around the world have won really big by doing it.

i DO understand statistics (studied at degree level); I don’t buy lottery tickets.

@Hexenjagd You obviously don't understand statistics or probability. Let me guess, your numbers are your families birthdays. Hah!