by Colin Fairbrother

 

Lottery operators currently work on the basis of very big Jackpots to draw interest and increase ticket sales. For regular players who accept that in all probability they will never win a Lotto jackpot in their lifetime but still play, of more interest is how often they get a win and the percentage return.

 

Recently 12th May 2010 the parameters for the UK Thunderball Jackpot game were changed from a Pool of 34 to 39 for the main numbers but still 1 from 14 for the Power or Thunderball and a £3 prize if you got the Thunderball alone. The operators state they return 52.882% of sales in prizes. First prize is a not insignificant £500,000.00. Prize and Odds breakdown are as follows: -

 

 

On a Usenet group I posted a set of 14 numbers produced by LottoToWin. The group over the years since 1995 has had contributions from those capable of thinking in this area of interest but now has been taken over by a dozen or so predictionists, loonies and UseNet thugs with very foul mouths. Having made the group unbearable to any one with any self respect they now indulge in trivial abusive banter between themselves somehow thinking the traffic to the group is reading their garbage when in fact I have discovered the overwhelming majority is going to previous articles which the likes of Google have included in their links. 

 

As each of the ThunderBalls were in my set at least a £3 prize would be won for each draw over the 20 week trial. See Numbers Posted or: -

 

 

My return percentage of 60% for a LottoToWin set was better than the odds for the five lowest prize levels which indicate a return of 43% is in order. 

 

 

 

By comparison the resident chief predictionist and village idiot in that usenet group Robert Perkis (or Bob P) who deludes himself into thinking he knows something other than nonsense in this field of interest, achieved only a very weak 29% return. Another idiot that goes under the pseudonym Nick UK posted only one set of numbers on June 22, 2010 and got below the expected 43% with only 34%. This mortified him so much that he subsequently published a fictitious set of results outside the predetermined dates and after the draws (a common ruse by Lotto charlatans using tickets purchased by others), which included two £100 wins.  

 

An interesting point is that the UK Thunderball game gives the best guaranteed return I know of in a Jackpot Lotto game. For an outlay of £14 for 14 lines if you play all 14 Thunderballs you are guaranteed a £3 minimum return ie 21.43%.

Academics and others justified playing high cost distorted prize range Covers that guaranteed a small prize for a disproportionately high cost, purportedly because Lotto players wanted to get a prize in every draw. (Never did see any statistics to support this argument.)