8 Lucky Stars

It would seem so, according to this article:

[Q] Your chances of winning the UK Lotto are normally about 1 in 13 million (as it’s a 6 from 49 game). If you buy 4 lines in one draw then your chances are 4 times better, so about 4 in 13 million. I’ve heard it’s better to play more entries in one draw, but if you buy 1 entry for 4 weeks, aren’t your chances exactly the same 4 in 13 million?

[A] Your figures are not quite right. If you play once a week for 4 weeks the probability is not 4 in 13 million…..

Read more here.

From Wagerseek.com, some very good advice. I’ve highlighted the ones that I think are most important to remember:

1. The first requirement is to buy a ticket. You cannot win unless you play.
2. After playing a ticket, check the numbers.3. Check to see if you have won. Numerous players won but they never bothered to check if they have won. Their prizes remain unclaimed to this day.
4. Buy, check, claim your winnings.
5. Groups or syndicates of lottery players are a good idea. If one member wins, everybody wins.
6. Your chances of winning are greater if you join a syndicate.
7. Play regularly.
8. Subscribe
9. Make it easy to play.
10. If you do not want to wait in lines or queues you should play by SMS text message.
11. If you do not want to wait in lines or queues you should play online.
12. Dream, it will make the game more fun to play.
13. Dream a lot
14. Boats, houses, cars, holidays, donating are good things to dream about.
15. Choose your numbers randomly since the winning numbers are random.
16. Use lucky dips.
17. Use random number generators.
18. Use a good spread of numbers
19. You should try 4, 13, 25, 32, and 39.
20. The following numbers may prove to be lucky 17, 24, 26, 31, 40.
21. Your friends may be luckier than you, so buy tickets for them.
22. If they win, remind them to share the winnings.
23. You may not win even if you buy 100,000 tickets.
24. Addiction is a serious problem, so do not get addicted to gambling.
25. Do not overplay
26. If you suspect that you may be suffering from gambling addiction, please seek professional help.
27. If you have serious money problems you should get professional financial help.
28. Remember that it is just a game.
29. Your problems will not be solved by the lottery.
30. Your financial problems may be overcome by the lottery if you win the big prize.
31. Be random about choosing the numbers. Do no use a system.
32. Play your numbers randomly. Do not form patterns on the ticket sheet.
33. Play your numbers randomly. Do not form zigzags on the ticket sheet.
34. Play your numbers randomly. Do not form circles, squares, or other shapes on the ticket sheet.
35. Play your numbers randomly. Do not pick numbers that have already won.
36. Play your numbers randomly. Do not pick birthdates because they stop going higher than 31.
37. Play your numbers randomly. Do not use repeating numbers because that is not random.
38. Play your numbers randomly. Do not use consecutive numbers because that is not random.
39. Do not use all even numbers.
40. Do not use all odd numbers.
41. Playing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, is not random.
42. Playing 22, 23, 24, 25, 26 is not random either.
43. Playing 7, 17, 27, 37, 47 is not random as you may have already guessed.

Barry Leiba tryies to tackle lottery-players’ general lack of understanding of statistics and numbers lottery players in his blog, where he lists five problems that that mean the vast majority of players won’t win:

1. The small up-front cost works in the lottery’s favour. If it costs one dollar to buy a ticket, the expense seems so small that it’s “worth a tryâ€?. At 100 dollars a ticket, there’d be far fewer takers. Of course, if you buy one ticket every week for two years, you’ll spend 100 dollars… and your expected return will still be so close to zero that there’s really little difference…
2. People don’t understand the concept of independent events, or they forget what they might know about it when it comes to playing the lottery. Someone who’s dutifully bought a ticket every week for two years often has some sense that he’s “due to winâ€?, that it’s “my turnâ€?. And if he misses a week because he’s away on vacation, he might actually rue that, thinking that that was the week he would have won, had he only bought a ticket. Yes, when you look at it from the beginning, your odds of a win are better if you plan to play 100 times than if you plan to play once. But if you’ve already lost 99 times, your odds of a win on your 100th play are exactly the same as those on your first: vanishingly small.
3. People, even when they ought to know otherwise, have a sense that they can “get closeâ€?, and that it matters. I heard someone say this last week, in fact: “Oh, man, this is the closest I’ve gotten! I bet I can get it next week.â€? No, sorry: if you have to match six numbers to win, and you matched five of six this time… that gives you no edge whatever toward matching six next time. Next time, and every time, you start from scratch.
4. People maintain an unreasonable level of optimism with respect to these sorts of things. “Someone has to win. It could be me!â€? Well, yes, it could be. It could also be you who gets squashed by a boulder falling from the hill you’re driving past. And you know what?: The latter is the more likely one. But we tend to be optimistic about favourable events with minuscule probabilities, while at the same time thinking that unlikely disasters with greater, but still small, probabilities are simply too remote to consider.
5. People believe in “luckâ€?. This is sort of related to the optimism thing, but rather than just reflecting an attitude, the “luckâ€? question is just one of magical thinking. “I feel lucky today.â€? I think I can beat the house, but just today, just because I felt good when I awoke, or because I found a shiny penny, or because the stars are right. Even if one can convince someone of all the points above, one can’t compete with magical thinking.

So, his advice - and mine too - is to play the lottery strictly for fun, not in any hope of winning the jackpot.

Jack Whittaker wishes he’d never won the jackpot
Whittaker lost his friends, became an alcoholic, and his beloved granddaughter died - all because he won $315M on the Powerball. He says it was a curse.

Yes, it’s a sad story. But it needn’t have been like that.
He made two crucial mistakes.
First, he let everybody know he’d won this vast amount. (Although, to be fair, US Powerball winners don’t have the automatic right to anonymity that UK Lottery winners enjoy; however, there is apparently a legal loophole that will let them claim anonymously.) Unless you’re a real publicity hound with the skin of a well-worn rhino, you should keep quiet about your jackpot win and tell no more than immediate family; in fact, only those family members who can be trusted not to blab.
This will mean trying to keep everything looking normal for a while - going into work as usual, and so on. But this period of pretend-normality will give you the time to adjust to being rich; you won’t have your life turned totally upside down within a couple of days. You’ll also have the time to think about what you want to do with your new-found riches. Set up a business? Give it to charity? Give it all to the kids? Whatever it is that you eventually decide, you’ll have had the time to thoroughly evaluate and assess every option.
During this time, get some good financial advice. Here in the UK, the National Lottery has highly qualified -and discreet - financial advisers on hand to help winners. If your Lottery organisation offers that sort of help, take it.
When you do eventually decide on what to do, let on that you’ve won the lottery, but be careful to minimise the amount; tell everybody that it’s half a million or so. That’s enough to account for chucking in the job, going on holiday, buying the new house and car and splashing out on family gifts. In peoples’ eyes, you’ll be comfortably off, not mega-wealthy. Then, unlike Jack, the leeches and parasites who just want your money will stay away, and your old friends won’t be frightened off.
Jack’s second mistake was to be too generous. He gave money to everybody and anybody. He set up a charitable foundation - which was at least the right way to go - but didn’t appoint any independent trustees to run it for him and hand out the cash. So any wastrel who wrote a pitiable enough begging letter got money. He was a decent man who wanted to use his fortune for the betterment of others, but this wasn’t the way to do it.
He also lavished money on his family, especially his teenage granddaughter. At 17, she got four cars and $2000 a week cash. I don’t know about you, but I’ve not known many teenagers who would use that kind of money wisely.
Certainly, make sure your kids and grandchildren get a good start in life. The best way to do that is to set up a trust fund that will pay for things like college courses, house deposits and so on. They won’t go short of what they need, but they’ll still have to work for what they want.
The worst way is to do what Jack did and just throw cash at them. In his granddaughter’s case, the outcome was inevitable; unsuitable ‘friends’ latched onto her, she got heavily into drugs and eventually she was found dead.

So don’t follow Jack Whittaker’s example.