[Closed] The national lottery, it really is rubbish now.

Yup not what it once was I think the Eurolottery was the changing point. Even more so now it costs the same.

1.5 million, just 50k/year tax free for the next 30 years 🙂

Yep, I've always thought the drop off between getting every number and 'almost every number' is a bit steep.

Would be great to win, though!

Even more so now it costs the same.

you also seem to have more of a chance of winning your stake back.

I stopped buying into it when it went up to £2 a line.
I also don't personally know anyone who's won a substantial amount on it.
Like has been said above if I do fancy a flutter I use the euromillions lottery.

it's a mug's game either way

Won £25 for 3 numbers on last nights draw

It's been in a long, slow, steady decline for years. Camelot have just spread the amount of money spent on lottery products thinly over too many games. Back in the early days the jackpot was 8-9 million, rollovers would be knocking on the 20 million mark.

Now you have two draws a week, thunderball, daily draws, and vast arrays of scratch cards. The jackpot hardly changed when the price doubled.

I only ever do the euromillions, and that's if I remember to pick up a ticket.

I only do euro millions now,lottery is rubbish,1.1 million,£500,000 house,£300,000 Lamborghini,not much left to fill the tank,you could probably live off 1.1 million if you have your wits about you.
Personally I would need more.

I also don't personally know anyone who's won a substantial amount on it.

My neighbours a few doors up did.

it's a mug's game either way

Here come the fun police.

Stopped doing it when it went to £2 a line despite using the same numbers since the very start.

I now can't look at any results for the rest of my life in case my old numbers come up.

Stealth tax. Still, look what it did for British Cycling.

the payouts are crap when compared to the odds of getting all six numbers. should really be paying out ~14 million based on the odds.

why not go down to the bookies and chance a fiver on getting five numbers correct... spread over five bets. better chance of winning and a big payout if you do.

Here come the fun police.

How much did they win drac?

We have a syndicate at work for a bit of a laugh. Win £25 fairly regularly. We don't take it that seriously, we know it's a shadow of it's former self. But we reckon we paid for London 2012 over the years!

At least two "proper" winners in our village, apparently. They seem happy enough!

Agree. I only bother with Euromillions now, the lottery is barely worth bothering with.

How much did they win drac?

About £125k IIRC.

Doesn't seem like there are that many people having fun that I'm spoiling. (PS you're still a mug if you buy lottery tickets).

Some people enjoy putting it on, I do, Mug nah just someone who chucks a spare £2 on the odd euro line for well fun.

I still play both not least as 45% of the Lottery ticket price goes to good causes but it's the euro millions which catches the eye.

Someone famous (can't remember who) did some maths and said 'trying to get rich by playing the lottery is like trying to commit suicide by flying scheduled commercial airlines'.

If you buy a ticket on Monday, there's more chance of you dying before you can collect your winnings on Saturday!

That said, I still play the odd line if I've got change in my pocket on the Friday cider run.

'trying to get rich by playing the lottery is like trying to commit suicide by flying scheduled commercial airlines'.

I know of a couple of people who have won large amounts and plenty of people who have won £10s or £100s.

I don't know anyone who has been in a plane crash, or a partial air disaster. 😉

mdavids - Member
Stopped doing it when it went to £2 a line despite using the same numbers since the very start.

I now can't look at any results for the rest of my life in case my old numbers come up.

This happened to my in-laws. Gave up when it increased to £2, having used the same numbers since the start.
Randomly looking at the results while waiting for the next program to start and their numbers came up...!

If you buy a ticket on Monday, there's more chance of you dying before you can collect your winnings on Saturday!

Best collect it earlier then, maybe the Thursday.

you are 8 times as likely to win the lottery compared to the euromillions.

I wouldn't moan of I won lol.

I just buy one euro lotto ticket.

The U.K. Lotto has too many stupid games and silly prices.

I do the Euromillions if there's a good sized pot, but I do the Health Lottery fairly regularly, much cheaper, and a £100,000 win would make a big difference to my life, it would clear my mortgage and some other stuff, and still leave a large chunk that I could add to my meagre pension pot.
A Euromillions win would give me a life I could quickly become accustomed to, though... 😀

Its a detection mechanism for catching time-travellers.

A former neighbours dad won 4.3 million in 2000, gave my neighbour 1 million, he paid his mortgage off and moved to a bigger house.

OK, he's mortgage free now but he's blown the lot and now drives a minibus.

OK, he's mortgage free now but he's blown the lot and now drives a minibus.

how much coke and hookers does 820k buy you

As an idiot tax it even surpasses speeding fines.

The lower jackpots are part of a plan Camalot put in place at the same time they put the price up, they also operate the Euro Millions in the UK too, so there's little point making it appeal to punters after big wins because the Euros will always be bigger so why compete with yourself?

The National Lottery now offers better prizes for smaller wins (although £500 for 5 numbers sounds a kick in the spuds!) and there's a raffle element.

So if you're looking for a reasonable chance (relative to lotteries) of winning a couple of quid, maybe a few hundreds and a 14 million to 1 or so chance of winning more than a million play the National Lottery, it's closer to 'normal gambling'.

If you want to buy into a dream of winning tens of millions you play the Euros - the odds aren't as good - 76 million combinations of numbers apparently, but they do share the pot with lessor winners if it gets too big.

I play the Euro now and again, it's nice to day dream about garages full of exotic cars or private jet flights to Whistler with your mates - but does anyone play to actually win it? Do people sit there Friday night desperately holding onto their ticket prying for the win?

3 am and an email alter off from the phone.....lottery 'we have news re your ticket log in' ....I am awake so I look sorry you cannot access thwe site between 3 and 6 am,

log in at breakfast and on the Euro millions I was a winner

£3.00

Do people sit there Friday night desperately holding onto their ticket prying for the win?

Only way out of the ghetto, either that or boxing.....

Is it more superstitious to believe in God or in your chances of winning the Lottery, I wonder???
Watching a bloke 20 years ago buy a lottery ticket and a packet of fags I did ask myself whether the human brain is wired to understand probability....good chance of the Jackpot...poor chance of The Big C. 😯

Is it more superstitious to believe in God or in your chances of winning the Lottery, I wonder???

Well there's evidence of people wining the lottery so that answers that one.

Chances of winning the lottery close to 100% Drac; somebody wins almost every week.
Chances of me winning the lottery would improve if I bought a ticket but not by much..

Chances of me winning the lottery would improve if I bought a ticket but not by much..

Well from 0 to 1:54 of some kind of win, that's fair bit and even at 1:14m it's a lot better than no chance. But if you don't want to play then so be it others don't mind playing it.

Almost as regressive as football season tickets!

I do want to play, honest...it's just my left hemisphere (the rational, thinking part of the brain)that prevents me.... 🙁

I used to work with a bloke who wouldn't play the lottery because the prize wasn't big enough. Sorry.. £1.5m, not enough? Who the hell are you, Warren Buffet? (Spoiler - he wasn't)

He chose instead to play Euromillions. The odds of that are like winning the normal lottery 50 times 🙄

OK, he's mortgage free now but he's blown the lot and now drives a minibus.
how much coke and hookers does 820k buy you

About 12 years worth.

But seriously, I've not a clue what he's done with it. Gambling maybe ? I may be boring, but if that was me and I had, won, or someone from Heirhunters knocked on with a Million quid, I'd make sure I'd never have to worry about money again.

Being mortgage free now helps but I'd rip the house apart, have it modernised and move into a smaller place and rent this one out.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!

EDIT - well that makes no sense now the spam has been deleted. 😆 😐

I used to work with a bloke who wouldn't play the lottery because the prize wasn't big enough

I agree, only play EuroMillions myself.

Someone famous (can't remember who) did some maths and said 'trying to get rich by playing the lottery is like trying to commit suicide by flying scheduled commercial airlines'.

Going back some years a mate on his way home gets a call from his wife , we need some milk for the kids breakfast - he stops at the local spar shop and their having the lottery stuff installed , pays for his groceries and the girl serving says do you want to try a scratch card -£50k £50 bloody thousand. Jammie bar steward.

Someone famous (can't remember who) did some maths and said 'trying to get rich by playing the lottery is like trying to commit suicide by flying scheduled commercial airlines'.

Buddy Holly?

i must admit to not playing the lotto very often,but i did win about a fiver on a scratchcard about 7 years ago.

tbh i would be very happy if i won anything,but £10,000 would be a fantastic amount (could buy a new bike(s)/pay some bills e.t.c)

may well start buying the odd scratchcard again.

I guess £1.5 million isn't 'enough' nowadays, maybe it was 20 years ago? All depends on what you need to 'live' but I'm guessing most people enter the lottery in the hope (vain or otherwise) of winning enough that they can change their lives? For me personally £1.5 million would have a significant but not totally life changing effect, £10 million on the other hand would be life changing.

I guess people day dream about "how much better my life would be if I won..." and even if their chances are small there's a glimmer of hope which for some people makes the cost/chances of winning irrelevant.

For me personally £1.5 million would have a significant but not totally life changing effect,

😯

£2 a week charity donation / additional tax:

1:14million chance of a life changing win,
£1 goes on prize money
55p donated to a good cause
24p levied by the government to help cure the deficit
The rest goes on profits for camelot (which they will also pay tax on)

I doubt £2 a week donated to any charity would get anywhere near the economic benefits. It certainly wouldn't get you the chance at having your money back.

So the question becomes, why aren't you doing your bit & buying a ticket every week?

So the question becomes, why aren't you doing your bit & buying a ticket every week?

Freewill.

For me personally £1.5 million would have a significant but not totally life changing effect

If you take the average UK salary as being £26,000 (got that from google), it would take you 57.7 years to earn that ignoring interest / pay rises. I'm guessing that would make quite a difference to a lot of people

Freewill.

Free Brian!

So the question becomes, why aren't you doing your bit & buying a ticket every week?

Freewill.

Good reason 😈

Freewill.

When they add the extra 10 numbers and lengthen the odds for the domestic game I'll be giving it up. I've had the same set of numbers from the start and now seems a good time to knock it on the head.

I'm in the not enough to bother about camp these days as it's a p!$$ poor return - it's been below £1m for a 6 number win too many times lately and I'd while you'd be overjoyed to win a few hundred k you'd be gutted that it down't compare to the £8-20m of old.

Camelot should be stripped of the franchise and it taken back to basics - no scratchcards no thunderball just a single draw a week with a realistic* chance of winning a decent "life changing" (your's and your families/friends) amount and nothing else.

* I read a statistic that shows how unlikely it is to win the other day and that's that you're more likely to have been married to Katie Price (Jordan) than to win the Lottery Jackpot in any given draw.

Free Nelson Mandela?

£3.20 win last week on Euromillions

I got 5 numbers on my birthday about 13 years ago. 1500 quid. It was a Wednesday. The bonus was 26 where as I needed 25. I honestly thought I'd won loads more until I read it properly. Not won anything since..

probably live off 1.1 million if you have your wits about you

Probably? If you gave 1.1 mil to a decent investment management company, you'd never have to work again in your life.

I once saw a clip on You've Been Framed where a fella had recorded the lottery results show one week and then gone and bought a ticket with those winning numbers.

The following week, when his wife thinks she's watching the results show to check the numbers, she's watching the recording...

It was genius 🙂

I know people worth up to £1.5m, they still work and seem pretty ordinary really. Nice house but no super car.

I've never had any interest in buying a ticket but do invest in the stock market - makes more sense to me I suppose. Never bet on horses either though that does give a far better return that the lottery and is more fun - but more effort I suppose.

I know people worth up to £1.5m, they still work and seem pretty ordinary really. Nice house but no super car.

That's because they still want to make more money and/or enjoy their job.

If I was doing a 9-5 in a job I hated when I won, I'd quit my job and go and do whatever took my fancy. You'd probably get 5 percent returns on average by investing that 1.5 mil, that's 75k a year - aka living comfortably.

That's the thing really, if you're earning decent money might as well carry on doing it - it's how you value your time I suppose. I wonder how long I'll be able to earn as much as I do now, would I take a job paying an average salary or would I 'retire'? Hopefully the wife will still be working to make that decision easier!

We can afford a couple of quid a week so we put some numbers on - I'm fully aware of the odds, but gotta be in it to win it I suppose.

If granddad-in-law had been born three days earlier we'd have won the jackpot a year or two back (one line was the usual birthdays...). Was a bit gutted to have won a significantly smaller amount for five numbers, but still up on the entire venture...

Camelot should be stripped of the franchise and it taken back to basics - no scratchcards no thunderball just a single draw a week with a realistic* chance of winning a decent "life changing" (your's and your families/friends) amount and nothing else.

I know of a syndicate of warehousemen that won £8m between 6 of them. There was slight panic from the management and HR making sure that they weren't all going to leave straight away! In the end I think 4 out the 6 stayed in their jobs. There was a few Ferraris parked where there once were Fiestas though 😆

I've never had any interest in buying a ticket but do invest in the stock market - makes more sense to me I suppose.

You make £2 investments?

I don't buy tickets with any expectation to win, but if I have £2 in my pocket it's better for me to spend it on a lucky dip than on a bag of Wine Gums.

I think I'll continue with the lottery. There are so many things that can screw your life up in an instant, but very few that can improve it, and in my eyes winning the lottery jackpot would be a wonderful thing to happen.

I know people worth up to £1.5m, they still work and seem pretty ordinary really. Nice house but no super car.

And that's the key. £1.5m will allow you to live comfortably if you don't throw it around.

Let's see...

We owe £90k on the house. I'd pay that off, move somewhere nicer, rent this place out and buy a nice used camper van for say £30k. Let's say I spend £500,000 on that lot, so £1m left.
I'd rent this place out which would bring in around my current salary.
Mrs PP earns a lot more then I do, but we wouldn't need more than £1500 a month on top of the rent we'd be collecting to live rather splendidly and pay the bills. So I could set up as a part time moblie mechanic, based at my nice new house and Mr's PP could keep chickens and make cakes if she wanted,
And on top of that we could bank £1m and the interest should bring in £30k or more a year, which is all we'd really need and then some.

So no flash cars, coke, hookers, helicopters etc. Stay as we are, spend some wisely, invest some, and we'd never have to work again if we didn't want to. But we'd probably have something to keep us occupied!

and in my eyes winning the lottery jackpot would be a wonderful thing to happen.

I do wonder if it really would be though. I reckon the vast majority burn through the cash quickly and end up broke and bitter after 1-3 years.

I still do Euromillions every week though.....

PLEASE GOD....let me prove to you that money won't change me!!....ha ha ha

This time next year guys......fat bikes are on me!!!...lol

I have literally just won £100 on a £10 scratch card 25mins ago, 3rd time within the last 11 days!

I'm proper hooked now.

Amazing that a regressive revenue raising scheme has lasted so long - and people still don't get it!!

Amazing that a regressive revenue raising scheme has lasted so long - and people still don't get it!!

Or they get it and aren't in the slightest bothered.