Wednesday 29 February 2012

How to spot a lottery scam

There are three main contact methods used by “Lottery Scammers”, these are email, phone and post. Most follow a similar theme of telling you that you have been fortunate enough to win a large prize in a draw or a lottery.

In most cases you would have never heard of the said lottery or draw and you certainly wouldn’t have entered it.

The main thing to remember if you receive any communication along these lines is to be sceptical and ask yourself:
  • Did you enter the lottery they mention?
  • Do you have a ticket for that lottery?
  • Have you ever given your contact details to a company you’ve purchased a ticket from?
It’s always worth remembering that if it appears too good to be true, it almost always is.
Other tips for what to look out for:

  1. No licensed Lottery would ever ask you to send money up-front − an administration fee or tax, the list is endless but they are all aimed at getting you to give them money before you collect your winnings. Under no circumstances send them any money.
  2. Never under any circumstances give them your bank details.
  3. Never under any circumstances give them your contact details.
  4. Never ring a phone number they give you as they will undoubtedly be a premium number, some of which can cost you £100’s just on connection.
UK National Lottery Scams

The UK National Lottery is one licensed Lottery that may legitimately have your email or postal address if you hold an online account with them. These points will help you identify a fraudulent UK National Lottery winning notification email.

The UK National Lottery will only tell you in an email if your ticket has won a prize, they will never tell you how much you have won.

The UK National Lottery will never ask for any personal details or bank details in a letter or email.

The UK National Lottery will email you if your ticket is a winner with the subject line “News about your ticket!” Any other subject line regarding “Winning” won’t be from The UK National Lottery.

The UK National Lottery will on occasion send its online account holders emails regarding subjects other than winning which could come from the following email addresses: admin@national-lottery.co.uk, player@national-lottery.co.uk, play@national-lottery.co.uk, help@national-lottery.co.uk, play@play.national-lottery.co.uk, directdebit@national-lottery.co.uk, rollover@email.national-lottery.co.uk, play@email.national-lottery.co.uk

For further checks read the UK National Lottery “Common Lottery Scams” page or call their Customer Care team on 0845 278 8000

The people who run these scams are very clever and will seemingly have what, on the face of it, will sound like a plausible explanation for all your questions. If you are tempted to follow up any of these approaches, always seek the advice of a close professional friend or member of the family before doing so.

Other checks you can make include calling the Office of Fair Trading hotline on 020 7211 8111 and they will let you know if they have any reports that your particular communication is from a “Scammer”
Alternatively the UK’s Gambling Commission publishes the names of all companies and individuals who hold, or have applied for, operating lottery licences in Great Britain. Click here

Tuesday 28 February 2012

National Lottery to launch new mobile friendly website

Yesterday, the National Lottery announced changes to their Interactive Account Terms and Conditions, Rules for Draw-Based Games Played Interactively, and Interactive Draw-Based Games Procedures.

The main reason for the changes say the National Lottery, is to update them to take into account the imminent launch of their new mobile-friendly version of their existing website.

This new mobile website will provide a streamlined version of the full National Lottery website we all see when we visit via a computer. The majority of the function available on the full website will be available, including the ability to check results, log in to your account and take part in the draw based games such as Lotto and its various versions, EuroMillions and Thunderball. You will not however, be able to play any Instant Win Games, nor will you be able to create or manage your Direct Debit subscriptions.

The Terms and Conditions review has been undertaken to make certain that they are in line with how the National Lottery website operates and are completely up to date. They have also been slight changes to clarify the differentiation between the new mobile version of the site and the existing full version.

Existing account holders have been informed they need not take any action as a result of the changes, but that they need to be aware that if they access the website once the mobile friendly version is live using any Android or iPhone device, you will most likely be redirect automatically to the mobile site.

Visit the National Lottery Website

Playing the lottery online has many benefits, read our article on 'The Benefits of Buying Lottery Tickets Online'

Follow this link to buy your lottery tickets online

Benefits of Online Shopping

The advent of the internet has revolutionised the way in which we shop. As each year passes, the gap between offline spend and online spend narrows.

In 2011, 1 in 5 Christmas presents were purchased online with analysts predicting that figure to rise to 1 in 4 by next Christmas.

Here are the main benefits to shopping online

Convenience

With the busy lives we all lead, time is becoming our most valuable asset. Shopping online gives us time. Not only do you save the time you would have taken travelling to shops, walking between shops and queuing at the tills,  you are also not restricted by store opening times. Being able to shop 24 hours a day 7 days a week makes shopping inline far more convenient than offline.

It’s Cheaper Description: shopping-online

By shopping online you are only a click away for comparing the best prices from 100’s of online shops. With online retailers running their operations from a few warehouses, they don’t have to pass on the costs associated with running hundreds of high street shops. Those savings can mount up as the warehouse won’t have to pay for window dressing, store security, heating, rates, signage and staff. Whilst store prices can sometimes match online prices, it’s very rare that they better them.

When you add the cost of travelling to and from the shops when you shop offline, the savings can become quite substantial.

Choice

The variety of choice you get online far exceeds that when you shop offline. There are no boundaries when shopping online. You can shop at stores at the other end of the country without paying any extra. You can buy the latest fashions and technology from across the world. You have a far greater selection of colours, sizes, and brands to choose from. If an item is out of stock, very often you can request an email to let you know when it is available should you still want to buy it.

 Buying gifts

If you buy a friend or relative a gift offline, you will need to take it home, package it and then post it. Buying the gift online and you can have it sent directly to them with a personal message. Again, saving you time and money.

 Additional Savings Description: shopping.online

When conventional shopping you often spend more than you need to or even want to. Shopping offline is not only tiring but it also uses up a lot of energy.  Which is why shopping trips are often punctuated with stops for a break, taking in a cup of coffee and a snack, then maybe stopping off for lunch at a restaurant.

Then there is the temptation of the impulse buy. How often do we come home after a shopping trip with something we hadn’t planned on buying and very often don’t need. What is more frustrating are the occasions that you take a shopping trip, pay the cost of travel and parking, stop off for lunch, then spend hours looking but not finding what it was you went out for in the first place.

 Second Hand Shopping

Although most high streets nowadays have charity shops, the selection of goods available isn’t great. With shops like eBay and Amazon, there isn’t anything you can’t buy second hand if you want to. With many second hand products being impulse buys from offline shoppers and hardly used if at all, you can save yourself a lot of money buying second hand and still end up with a new product.

 Discreet Buying

Some shopping is better done in the privacy of your own home. If buying sexy lingerie embarrasses you, shopping online should be your choice. Sex toys and adult reading is also something you may prefer to shop for online for.

 Guarantees

One benefit of shopping online that is often overlooked, is the benefit of proof of delivery. Most products you buy nowadays come with some form of guarantee. Electrical items will normally have a one year guarantee. The guarantees are the same if you buy offline, but if you haven’t kept your receipt, you won’t be able to prove when you made your purchase. By buying online, you will always have proof of when you made your purchase.

Taking all these benefits into account, you can see why the number of people shopping online is on the up.

As long as you take sensible precautions regarding who you shop with, you can see how shopping online can be a rewarding experience.

If you already shop online or are thinking of doing so, then you could be getting free lottery tickets when you do, simply by joining Free National Lottery Tickets. If you carry out your online shopping through their links, you will get all the benefits we’ve covered, plus free Lotto and EuroMillions tickets. Sign up today!

Read our article on what to look out for when shopping online to make your shopping experience a good one.

Monday 27 February 2012

Unclaimed Lottery Prizes

Unclaimed lottery prizes in the UK total millions of pounds. For all the UK lottery games you have 180 days in which to claim your prize starting from the date of the particular draw.

Any prize winnings that remain unclaimed after such time are added to the fund for good causes.

Camelot, the UK’s lottery operators, go to great lengths to try and marry up the larger unclaimed Lotto and EuroMillions prizes with the winning ticket holders. They advertise the fact that there is an unclaimed prize in the area where the ticket was purchased, increasing the coverage as the 180 day deadline approaches. It’s not unusual for the operators to receive 100′s of claims when one of the larger prizes go unclaimed from players who lost their tickets, even if they didn’t know the numbers they selected on those tickets. If claimants can match the time that they say they bought the ticket along with the retailer the ticket was purchased through, then Camelot would usually launch an investigation. Valid claims can often be confirmed by using CCTV footage. If a ticket was purchased through a Post Office then it’s likely that the purchaser would be caught on screen. If an investigation turns up a likely valid claimant but not one that they can be sure of beyond any doubt, Camelot would wait until the 180 day claim period had expired just to make sure that no-one else claims the prize. If they haven’t then on occasion, the operators have paid out the prize.

There’s another reason why winnings can remain unclaimed. Players are often in shock when they discover they have won a life changing amount of money. It’s not uncommon for some players to wait days or even weeks before making a claim whilst they let it ‘sink in’.

There are two ways in which you can make sure that you don’t lose out on a lottery prize.

Buy your tickets online. Online ticket winners are notified automatically within hours of the draw taking place. There hasn’t yet been an online ticket winner who hasn’t received their winnings.

Get your tickets from Free National lottery Tickets. As the saying goes, ‘the best things in life are free’. As a member of FreeNationalLotteryTickets you can get free tickets to every single one of the UK’s Lotto and EuroMillions draws, and if your numbers come up, then we will automatically contact you so that you don’t miss out on your prize.

Signing up to our free Lottery Results Email Service will greatly reduce the chances of missing out on a winning ticket. With our busy lives it’s easy to forget to check your ticket even if you haven’t lost it.
Sign up below for our free Lottery Results Email Service

Thursday 23 February 2012

Mobiles can be a pain in the neck

No I’m not talking about the times when mobile phone go off in the cinema or library, or when you’re in a ‘mobile free’ carriage and the person opposite you decides to call their entire contact list. A new condition which has been labelled ‘text neck’ is reportedly on the rise.

Caused by flexing the neck for extended periods, ‘text neck’ causes discomfort and muscle pain. Experts, including chiropractors have put the increase in cases down to the rise in the number of hours that we now spend hunched over our mobile phones and tablet computer screens.

One chiropractor reported that her company had already treated thousands of patients for the condition and the number was increasing each month. The symptoms which can also include headaches and shoulder, arm and wrist pain, can be result in permanent arthritic damage if allowed to continue without treatment.

In some very severe cases the muscles have adapted to the flexed position. This has caused sufferers pain when they try to straighten their necks back into what is a normal posture.text.neck

The phrase ‘text neck’ was first adopted by a doctor in America. Dr Dean Fishman changed the name and direction of his practice after experiencing a massive influx of young patients visiting his chiropractor clinic with complaints of neck, back, arm and shoulder pain, all which he put down to ‘text neck’.  Dr Dean Fishman now runs the Text Neck Institute in Plantation, Florida.

Dr Dean Fishman said “Whenever kids came to the office with pain, I noticed they were always on their phones,” he went on “They would be positioned at ‘forward head posture,’ but that term wasn’t resonating with parents. After I started calling it “text neck”, we got an emotional response and decided to trademark the name to help change the way people hold their mobile devices.”mobile phone neck ache

Statistics show that in the UK we sent 15 times as many texts in 2011 as we did in 2006. Not only are more people communicating with others on mobile devices than ever before, smartphones are giving consumers more access to media content on demand, such as using apps, games and watching films. This is causing more people to be locked in text neck position for longer periods of time, increasing chances of them suffering pain, tendonitis and possibly arthritis.

Fortunately, the pain is treatable. With the right exercises the pain is relieved and by adopting a different stance when using a mobile phone or tablet you can reduce the chances of the problem occurring at all. Apparently, the secret is to keep the phone at eye level.

Easier said than done, but like anything else, if you can force yourself to do it, it will soon become a habit and hopefully you’ll never become a ‘text neck’ victim.

Get a free SIM card from Vodaphone and with it some free lottery tickets.

 

Cheap car insurance from Aviva

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‘Quote Me Happy’ is the car insurance comparison site from Aviva. As the world’s sixth largest insurance group and the UK’s largest insurer with over 19 million customers nationwide, serving one in free households, Aviva can offer the most competitive rates on the market.

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These are some of the great benefits you get when buying car insurance direct from Aviva

  • 15 weeks FREE car insurance
  • A saving of 20% when buying online
  • Up to one third off when you add a second vehicle
  • Named drivers can earn discounts equivalent to no-claims discounts of they subsequently take out their own  motor policy with Aviva
  • No claims protection if you are hit by a non-insured driver and it wasn’t your fault, plus you’ll get your ‘excess’ back.
  • Manage your insurance policy online and print out your cover note.

Get a quote now and you could be one of the 10% of Aviva customers who pay less than £205 for their motor cover!

The Biggest EuroMillions Jackpots

EuroMillions is a pan-European lottery launched in 2004. The first draw took place on Friday 13th February 2004 in Paris.

The odds against winning a jackpot in EuroMillions are 1 in 116,531,800. This is many times greater than the odds against winning the UK’s Lotto draw and for that reason, EuroMillions is prone to having many more rollovers.

EuroMillions also have Super Draws and Event Draws. These are special draws where the jackpot is set at a certain amount regardless of the normal expected jackpot. these jackpots can sometimes be as high as £100 million.

With a Super Draw, the winnings are rolled over if not won, whereas with an event draw, the winnings are shared amongst the winners of the next lowest tier if not won.

The first Superdraw in 2011 took place on May 10th as an introduction to the new Tuesday EuroMillions draw that began on that date.

Previous Super Draws took place on…

1st October 2010 with a jackpot of €100 million
5 February 2010 with a jackpot of €100 million
18 September 2009 with a jackpot of €100 million
6 March 2009 with a jackpot of €100 million
26 September 2008 with a jackpot of €130 million
8 February 2008 with a jackpot of €130 million
28 September 2007 with a jackpot of €130 million
9 February 2007 with a jackpot of €100 million
Below is a list of the most notable winners
Previous winners include:

13 May 2011 – One Spanish winner of the €121,019,633 Jackpot; Won by a 30-year-old baker Francisco Delgado Rodríguez from Pilas near Seville.
08 October 2010 – One UK winner of the £113,019,926 jackpot; winner was anonymous.
14 May 2010 – One UK winner of the £84,451,321 jackpot; winner was anonymous.
12 February 2010 – Two winners of the £112,016,226 jackpot (Spain and UK); The UK winners were Nigel Page and Justine Laycock from Cirencester who went public when they won £56,008,113.20.
6 November 2009 – Two UK winners of the £91,141,671 jackpot; On this occasion two winners shared the jackpot prize, receiving just over £45.5 million each, at that time they were the largest lottery prizes ever paid out in the UK. One of the winning tickets belonged to a syndicate of 7 people from Liverpool who each received £6.5 million, the other by a lucky couple living in Wales.
18 September 2009 – Syndicate wins €100 million or £89 million jackpot; Syndicate of 15 players Each member of the syndicate won more than €6 million.
8 May 2009 – One Spanish winner of the €126 million jackpot; On this occasion the jackpot had been rolled over six weeks running. With there being only one winner, this, at the time was the largest ever jackpot to have been won by a single ticket holder since EuroMillions began.
6 March 2009 – Two winners of the €100 million jackpot; Two winners shared the jackpot prize, receiving a whooping €50 million each.
26 September 2008 – 15 People won the €130 million jackpot; As there was no winner with all 5 numbers and two lucky stars, the super-draw jackpot of was won by those players who had 5 numbers and 1 lucky star, each winning a total of almost €9.2 million.
5 September 2008 – Two winners of the €119 million jackpot; Two winners shared the jackpot prize, receiving nearly €60 million each.
8 February 2008 – No winner of the €130 million jackpot; There was no winner with all 5 numbers and both lucky stars. The super-draw jackpot of was won by those people who had 5 numbers and 1 lucky star, winning a total of over €8.6 million each.
28 September 2007 – No winner of the €130 million jackpot; There was no winner with all 5 numbers and both lucky stars. The super-draw jackpot of was won by those people who had 5 numbers and 1 lucky star, winning a total of over €9.8 million each.
31 August 2007 – One winner of the €39 million or £29.1 million jackpot; the player remains anonymous.
10 August 2007 – One UK winner of the €52.6 million or £35.4 million jackpot; Angela Kelly, a 40-year-old former Royal Mail postal administrator from East Kilbride Scotland, won which was at the time the largest lottery win of its kind in the UK.
9 February 2007 – One Belgian winner won €100 million or £67.9 million; He won the EuroMillions jackpot with a ticket bought in Tienen Belgium. This at the time was the biggest ever lottery win in Belgium and the third-biggest individual win in EuroMillions history.
17 November 2006 – No single winner of the €183 million or £124 million jackpot; 20 people (7 British, 4 French, 3 Spanish, 3 Portuguese, 2 Irish, 1 Belgian) After eleven consecutive rollovers, again no ticket matched all the winning numbers, so the jackpot was shared amongst the twenty tickets that matched five numbers and one lucky star. The jackpot amount of £124 million was added to the regular prize fund for matching 5 numbers and one lucky star bringing the total to almost £134 million. Each ticket holder winning over €9.6 million or £7.1 million.
31 March 2006 – One Belgian winner won €75,753,123 or £56,608,222; After six consecutive rollovers, the EuroMillions jackpot was eventually won by an unnamed Belgian man. This became the second biggest win ever in Belgium, and the third-biggest win by an individual.
3 February 2006 – Three winners took the €183 million or £134 million; 3 people (2 French, 1 Portuguese). After eleven rollovers, the EuroMillions jackpot was won by three ticket holders, each receiving over €60 million.
29 July 2005 – One winner taking €115 million or £77 million; Dolores McNamara. After rolling over nine times in a row, the EuroMillions jackpot was won by a lady from Garryowen, Limerick, Ireland. A 45-year-old mother of six Dolores became at that time, the biggest individual winner in EuroMillions history.
As you can see, EuroMillions regularly has multiple rollovers and produces some mind boggling jackpot prizes.

Our tip would be to get as many entries into those large jackpot draws as possible. Even joining a syndicate of 100 people could win you a life changing amount of money.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

EuroMillions Trivia

EuroMillions, run in the UK by The National Lottery, is far and away the most popular lottery in Europe.

Launched in February 2004, EuroMillions was originally only available in Spain, France and the UK. Later that same year, EuroMillions expanded to include a further six European nations.

Euromillions offers 13 different prize tiers. This gives players an overall 1:13 chance of having a winning ticket. That compares to the National Lottery Lotto game odds of only 1:52. In other words, if you bought one EuroMillions ticket for every draw for a year, on average, you would win on 8 occasions.

The odds against winning a jackpot on Euromillions are just over 1 in 116 million. That compares with the National Lottery Lotto jackpot odds of 1 in almost 14 million. This is because with EuroMillions, you need to match 7 numbers compared to the 6 on the National Lottery Lotto game.

EuroMillion jackpots are on average more than three times larger than the Lotto game.

France has had more Euromillions jackpot winners than any other participating country.

Tesco’s sales fall prompting a drop in share value

Earlier this month Tesco’s released what it described as “disappointing” figures for the 7 weeks to January 2012.
Their like-for-like sales which doesn’t include fuel or newly opened stores fell 2.3%. That’s against last year’s figures where unusually bad weather caused many people to stay at home affecting the sales performance of all of our high street retailers. This is all despite Tesco’s launching a £500m price cuts campaign in an attempt to draw customers into their stores.
Tesco’s Chief executive Philip Clarke confessed that he was “disappointed” with the company’s performance, which was the weakest top four major supermarket chains Sainsbury’s Asda and Morrison’s, over a like-for-like period
City analysts had predicted a drop of only 0.8% and the reaction was a drop of 16% in their share value when the news came out. Over two weeks later the shares remain at the same level.
Analysts had predicted a fall mainly due to the greater emphasis Tesco has on its clothing and homewares business compared to its rivals. It’s been these areas in particular that shoppers have been cutting back on as the prospect of another recession begins to loom large on the horizon. Even so, Clarke was critical of the supermarket’s domestic performance which he said was “below our expectations and disappointing”.
The £500m price cuts campaign tagged “the Big Price Drop” was launched in September as Tescos’ attempted to reverse a reported drop in market share. Despite being over twice the size of their nearest rivals Asda with over 30% of the UK grocery market, Tesco’s had seen a gradual reduction in their market share over the preceding months. Tesco’s had warned the city that they expected sales to suffer in the short term as an increase in volume was not expected to offset an immediate drop in takings at their tills. Even so, some analysts felt that their “Big Price Drop” failed to capture shoppers’ imaginations.
To summarise, Clarke said “We delivered a very good Christmas shopping experience for our customers but in a highly promotional market, the volume response to our increased investment into lowering prices did not offset the deflation it has driven”.
It makes you wonder, have we seen Tesco’s reach their peak in the UK? With their worst Christmas results for twenty years and a drop in share value equivalent to almost £5bn and with their only growth being abroad, it’s certainly a possibility.
Get FREE lottery tickets by shopping online with Tesco’s. Join Free National Lottery Tickets today and collect 4 FREE LOTTERY TICKETS for this weeks draws

Sunday 19 February 2012

Tips On How To Win A Big Lottery Jackpot

Unfortunately there are no great revelations here. We can’t tell you anything that will improve your chances of winning the lottery over anyone else, other than to buy more tickets.

What we can give you is tips on how to win big if you do win.

It goes without saying that the first thing you have to do to win it is be in it. So make sure you’ve bought your ticket or tickets.

The odds against winning the lottery are the same for everyone, but reduce with every extra ticket you buy. Let’s take the Lotto for instance. The odds against winning with one ticket are about 1 in 14 million. Buy two tickets and that immediately goes down to 1 in 7 million. Buy 20 tickets and the odds are 1 in 700,000. Not everyone can afford 20 tickets each week, but if you were to join a lottery syndicate of say 20 people, you could have those extra 19 tickets for only £1, albeit only a share of those tickets. Still, it’s worth considering especially as 1 in 4 jackpots in the UK are won by lottery syndicates.

To win the lottery, you first of all have to take part. You’d be surprised by the amount of people who daydream about winning the National Lottery but fail to buy a ticket. Without a lottery ticket, you obviously have no chance of winning the jackpot, but there are a number of other things you can do to improve your chances of taking home the biggest jackpots.

How to choose your lottery numbers

While some people choose their lottery numbers entirely at random, others like to make their selection based on something personal to them. Anything from their date of birth, ages of their family, house numbers they’ve lived at, to their favourite numbers. The thing to watch out for, when choosing your numbers based on things like birthdays or anniversaries, is that these numbers will tend to be low ones – 31 or under if a day of the month, 12 or under if a month of the year, and Lotto numbers go all the way up to 49.

What’s more, if you’re hoping to win a lottery jackpot you’re also going to be hoping that your prize is as big as possible. If you choose numbers based on dates, you’re more likely to have to share your jackpot with all the other people who selected their numbers along the same lines.

You should also remember that just because a certain choice of numbers looks as though it would be unlikely like a consecutive run, it’s no more unlikely than any other selection. It is entirely down to chance and statistically you’re just as likely to see this type of combination in the lottery results as any other.

How to boost your chances of winning a big Jackpot

One of the easiest ways to make sure you choose lottery numbers completely at random is to buy lucky dip tickets. This will maximise your potential jackpot and chances of winning. Chosen automatically, you can be confident that these lottery tickets are randomly generated.

Of course, to stand any chance of winning a lottery jackpot, you must first have a ticket. By having two tickets you immediately double your chances of winning. Four tickets will quadruple your chances of winning…and so on.

Friday 17 February 2012

Do You Play The Same Lottery Numbers?

If, as is often the case you are one of those people who regularly play the same numbers in one of the National Lottery draw games, then if you aren’t already, you should seriously consider playing online through the National Lottery website. The benefits of playing the National Lottery online are not only those of convenience, but doing so could also mean the difference between winning a jackpot or not.

Firstly, it is unbelievably easy to play online. All you have to do is visit the National Lottery website and open an account. Once opened, you can deposit funds into your account using a debit card. Once funded, playing a game is extremely simple. If you wish to play Lotto, simply click ‘Lotto and Plus 5′ on the ‘Play Games’ menu item. Once there you can select to play the ‘Wednesday’ game, the ‘Saturday’ game or ‘Wednesday and Saturday’. You can then select the number of weeks you wish to play. This can be up to 8 weeks in advance, or if you wish you can select ‘continuous’. If you select continuous, funds will be automatically debited from your debit card monthly so you don’t even have to worry about payment.

Secondly, you never have to miss a draw again. We’ve all had weeks when we’ve either forgotten to buy a ticket, or been on holiday and forgotten to buy them in advance. Then there’s the time when you remember just in time then find a long queue at the National Lottery retailer and miss the deadline. Even if you don’t choose to play a ‘continuous’ game online, The National Lottery will email you when your last ticket has been drawn to remind you to renew.

Thirdly, and most importantly, you never have to worry about becoming one of those unlucky people whose numbers come up but don’t get their prize. Either they lose their lottery ticket, they forget to check their lottery ticket, or they do check their lottery ticket but not properly. Playing online you don’t even have to check the results. The National Lottery will email you advising you if you win, plus they will automatically credit your account with your winnings. With £millions worth of winnings going unclaimed each year, this is a benefit worth having.

What are also worth having are extra tickets as every extra ticket you have significantly improves your chances of winning

Thursday 16 February 2012

The odds against winning a Lotto jackpot

The National Lottery renamed their main draw Lotto in 2002 as part of a major rebranding exercise aimed at increasing ticket sales that had previously been flagging.
Camelot, the operators of the National Lottery who were awarded the licence for a second time in 2001 were keen to improve sales to ensure they kept the licence.
The games available through Camelot are still collectively known as The National Lottery and are one of the most popular forms of gambling in the UK with over 80% of the population participating
Here is a table of the odds against winning a prize in the UK’s National Lottery Lotto game.

Winning Combinations:
Winning Odds:
Jackpot – Match 6 numbers
13,983,815 to 1
Match 5 numbers Plus Bonus Ball
2,330,635 to 1
Match 5 numbers
55,490 to 1
Match 4 numbers
1,031.4 to 1
Match 3 numbers
55.656 to 1

The overall odds against winning any prize are 52.655 to 1. These don’t compare too favourably with the odds against winning a prize in the EuroMillions game of 1 in 13. But when you compare the odds against winning the jackpot, the Lotto odds of 1 in 14 million don’t look too bad when compared to the 1 in 116 million for EuroMillions.
The reason that there is a far greater chance of winning any prize with EuroMillions compared to Lotto, is because EuroMillions has 13 different winning selections against only 5 lotto ones.

These odds aren’t great but can be drastically reduced by having more entries into the Lotto draw. Great advice I hear you say, but what if I can’t afford more entries. Well that’s where we can help. Sign up to FreeNationalLotteryTickets and you will be able to get free tickets into all the Lotto and EuroMillions draws totally free. There’s no catch, read our FAQS to see how it works.
Find out more about lottery odds

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Publicity Or No Publicity

What a nice problem to have!

All jackpot winners of the National Lotteries Lotto game or EuroMillions, are given the option by the lottery organisers Camelot of having their details made public or not.  There is no right or wrong decision to make, everyone is different with different personalities and circumstances. What you are doing and where you are when you discover you’ve won will also have an impact on the decision you make. If you are with friends in a public place when you check your ticket, you would have probably blurted out ‘I’ve won the lottery’ before you’ve had time to think.

At that point you may have already lost the opportunity to remain anonymous. On the other hand if you were at home on your own in front of the TV when you discover you’ve won, you’d have time to consider your next action and its implications.
lottery winners

What is important is to take your time making a decision if you possibly can. If you start telling everyone straight away, you won’t be able to go back on that decision. However, if you keep it to yourself, you will always have the opportunity to go public in the future should you wish to.

Below are some things to consider if you are contemplating having publicity or not having publicity.

Publicity Pros

For winners who dream of getting their ’15 minutes of fame’, opting for publicity after a lottery jackpot win will bring them more publicity than they could ever imagine. The National Lottery organisers will often arrange for the presentation of the prize to be in a posh venue with champagne and all the trimmings. Local and international press and TV will be there to record the event and your face could appear all over the newspapers and TV. Interviews will follow for TV shows, newspapers, magazines and the web.

Publicity Cons

It’s often not until the initial excitement of all the new attention has worn off that the negative side of seeking publicity shows itself.

What past lottery winners have found is that the attention is far more than they bargained for and quite soon becomes a major and often permanent invasion of their privacy. They open themselves to being bad mouthed by old enemies with an axe to grind who find it all too easy to get a newspaper journalist to write about some past misdemeanour or secret you’d rather wasn’t made public. Friends start to wonder if they will see any of the spoils, and family will expect to be included too. Then there’s the begging letters that will start filling your postbag. Not only from genuinely destitute people and charities that really could do with your help, but from scammers too who will look to appeal to your good nature with practised and seemingly genuine stories that will pull at anyone’s heartstrings. You then become suspicious of the motives of any new friends that you make, and old ones you haven’t seen in while who get in touch. You find others have been discussing what they think you should do with your new found wealth and want to tell you. Rarely does it match what you want to do. You can feel that you have lost your identity as you are forever known as the man/woman/couple who won the lottery.

Getting Publicity Even Though You Don’t Want It

Just because you opt for Camelot not to make your win public doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Should a friend or colleague spill the beans then the media are perfectly entitled to follow the story up resulting in exactly the type of publicity you were seeking to avoid. Some newspaper journalists like nothing more than ‘sniffing out’ a lottery winner who has opted not to have publicity. It appeals to their investigative instincts to be able to track a winner down. Sometimes winners can unknowingly cause the leaks themselves. Pulling up in the drive in a new Ferrari 2 days after Camelot announce that there has been an anonymous jackpot winner in your area is asking for trouble.

Keeping the fact that you’ve won a major cash prize a secret is very difficult, but it can be and has been done successfully. Firstly opt out of the publicity at the first opportunity. Then don’t tell a soul about your win for at least 3 months if at all. If you do then decide to confide in family and or close friends, swear them to secrecy. Spend your money modestly and slowly without splashing out and try and keep a low profile.

Tips For Starting A Lottery Syndicate

We’ve covered the benefits of syndicated lottery tickets, but here are some things you should know about setting them up.

The most important thing to do is to create a Syndicate Agreement. This will serve to dispel any misunderstandings and help avoid future disagreements.

A Syndicate Agreement should cover which draws you are entering and the amounts each member contributes, when payments are due, which numbers to use, what happens if someone misses a payment, a process for adding new members or allowing existing members to leave, whether you go public or not in the event that you won a large prize, what do you do with small winnings, where you keep your tickets and who is responsible for managing the process.

You should also decide on whether you buy your tickets offline or online. If you choose offline, then you should agree a rota for checking the tickets. Depending on how many tickets your syndicate buy for each draw, checking the results can be quite time consuming. One of the benefits of playing online is that you needn’t check your tickets as were you to win, you’d receive an email.

Once you have an agreed Syndicate Agreement in place, you can relax in the knowledge that you have just multiplied your chances of winning a lottery jackpot by the number of members in your syndicate. And hopefully, you will one day own one of the statistical 1 in 4 lottery jackpots winning tickets that belong to a syndicate.

1 in 4 Lottery Jackpots Won By Syndicates?

Knowing that may prompt you to find out a little bit more about lottery syndicates. If 1 in 4 jackpot winners are lottery syndicates, it follows that 1 in 4 tickets purchased are purchased by lottery syndicates. It sounds a lot, but when you look into the maths, you’ll see why it’s so popular.

The only real way to improve your odds of winning a particular lottery draw, is to buy more tickets. For example; Buy 1 ticket into a Saturday draw for the Lotto costing £1, and your chances of matching all 6 numbers are 1 in almost 14 million. Buy 10 tickets into that same draw costing £10, and your odds of matching all 6 numbers would reduce to 1 in 1.4 million.

If you decided to join a lottery syndicate of 10 people each spending £10 in the same draw. The syndicate would be able to buy 100 tickets (10×10), thus reducing the odds of matching all 6 numbers to 1 in 140,000. Effectively giving you 10 times as much chance of winning.

Now, if you decided to join a lottery syndicate with 100 people each spending £10 in the same draw. The odds are now 1 in 14,000.

You can easily see why lottery syndicates are so popular. Admittedly, any prize you may win will be shared by all those within the syndicate, but even one hundredth of a Lotto jackpot win is a life changing amount of money, especially if it’s a rollover.

Yet Another EuroMillions Rollover!

At the time of writing, the EuroMillions jackpot has rolled over 38 times out of the previous 56 draws. In other words 2 out of every three EuroMillions draws have not produced a jackpot winner. Over the same period, the Lotto game has rolled over just 15 times, equal to 1 in every 4 draws. A big difference, made more surprising by the fact that eight other European countries also participate in every draw. Or is it such a surprise? When you look at the difference in the odds for both the Lotto and EuroMillions game, it all begins to make sense.

To win a Lotto jackpot you have to match 6 numbers. With a choice of numbers from 1 – 49, the chances of you doing that are 1 in 13,983,815, or to make it easy, 1 in 14 million.

To win a EuroMillions jackpot, you have to match 5 numbers ranging from 1 – 50, plus two numbers (lucky stars) ranging from 1 – 11. The odds against you doing that are 1 in 116,531,800, or 1 in almost 117 million.

Knowing that, it’s almost harder to believe that the jackpot is ever won.

Increase your chances by joining Free National Lottery Tickets today and find out how to get free lottery tickets every week!