Little Out.

I was looking at the Western Canada Lottery Corp. website this morning, curious about whether I would have won on a lottery ticket I didn't play.(I wouldn't have.)  Looking at other winning numbers I came across the winning numbers for last night's Pick 4 draw.  There was one winner, who won 400 bucks.  The obvious question is how many people played that lottery yesterday.  WCLC doesn't put out the number of sales per draw on their website, but at one dollar a draw all they had to sell was 400 tickets to cover that win, and I would think they sell considerably more tickets per draw than that.  Whoever won last night played what's called a 12 way box, which has two unique digits, and two digits that are the same, which last night was 4294.  The odds of winning with that configuration are 1:833.

Another (Stupid) Guaranteed Winning Strategy.

Back in October(I thought it was more recent than that) I presented a strategy for the Daily Grand lottery that will allow you to win on every draw.  We now have a new lottery in my neck of the woods, Pick 2, and once again I can guarantee you'll win on every draw.

Pick 2 is simple to play.  You pick 2 numbers, each ranging from 0 to 9.  If you pick the right first number you'll win.  So all you have to do is play every first number every draw, and you'll win.

The catch is that this will cost you 20 bucks, since each Pick 2 ticket is 2 bucks.  And what do you get if you get the right first number?   2 bucks.  So you'll be spending 20 bucks to win 2.  To win the big prize on Pick 2, which is 99 bucks, you need to get both numbers right.  For example to win last night's big prize you needed to play 17, while the people who played 10, 11, 12 etc. won 2 bucks.

How do you choose the second number?  I haven't got a clue.  You could either play the same second number for each ticket(01, 11, 21 etc.) or play a different one for each ticket(01, 12, 23 etc.), but as far as I can tell neither would be more effective than the other.

Is someone stupid enough to follow my strategy?  I sure hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone does.  Of course if you're really stupid you could play every number every draw.  That would cost you 200 bucks, to ensure you win 117 bucks.  At least with just playing all the first numbers there's a chance you'll win the 99 buck top prize, and if that happens you'll have made 79 bucks by spending 20.  The odds of winning the big prize on Pick 2?  1 in 100.

Guaranteed Win.

The Daily Grand is one of the newer lotteries in Canada.  You pick 5 numbers between 1 and 49, and a Grand Number from 1 to 7.  The grand prize is a thousand dollars a day for life, or a lump sum of seven million dollars.  If two or more tickets win the grand prize the seven million is split between the tickets, and no daily prize is available.  Draws are held on Monday and Thursday.

And I have a strategy that will let you win on every draw.  It's quite simple really.  You just have to play seven tickets for each draw.  This will allow you to play all seven Grand Numbers. and as a result always win, as all you need to win a prize is the Grand Number for that draw.

Can you see the flaw?  I'm sure you can.  You'd need to buy those seven tickets, and each ticket costs 3 bucks.  So you'd be spending 21 bucks a draw to guarantee you'll win...a free ticket, the equivalent of 3 bucks.  Oops.  It gets worse if you did this for both Monday and Thursday's draws.  You'd be spending 42 bucks to guarantee you'll win the equivalent of 6 bucks, with no guarantee you'll win more.  For example the chances of a ticket winning the next smallest prize, 4 bucks, is 1 in 20.

The grand prize seems to be pretty elusive no matter what strategy you use.  If you look at the list of past winning numbers it gives a prize breakdown for each draw.  It seems the grand prize has only been won a handful of times.  The odds of winning are 1 in 13,348,188.

The Nightmare Lottery Scenario.

I was just checking the numbers for the Saturday Western 6/49 draw to see if I would have won anything if I would have played my usual numbers.  I wouldn't have.(Not that I had a ticket of any sort.)  But it made me wonder if anyone has ever experience the nightmare scenario:  You look at the lottery numbers, and find out that if you had played your set of numbers that draw you would have won the grand prize.  Of course I'm thinking about a lottery like the Lotto 6/49 or the American Powerball lottery, where you have to get 5, 6, or more numbers to win millions of dollars.  Given the odds of winning such lotteries are in the millions to one the odds of not playing your numbers when they would have won should be identical.  

Did You Win The Powerball?

I know I didn't, not having a ticket and all.  But I apparently did win a free ticket on the Canadian Western 6/49 draw last night.  The top prize for that lottery is only 2 million bucks, but the odds are a lot better, only 14 million to 1 or so.  If you did win part of the big Powerball prize, and want to give some to a random stranger I'm more than willing to take it.

I Bet It Wasn't You.

Last night saw the biggest lottery prize drawn in Canadian history, with Lotto 6/49 reaching an estimated 64 million dollars.  Did you buy a ticket, Canadian reader?  Admit it, even if you didn't you probably thought about it.  But I feel safe in saying you weren't the person who won it if you did buy a ticket.  The winner was a single ticket in Mississagua, Ontario.  The chances the person or people that hold that ticket have ever visited this blog are slim.  Probably about the same odds of winning the big prize on Lotto 6/49, 1 in 14 some million.

Did I buy a ticket?  Yes I did.  But frankly I think if you're going to buy lottery tickets you should only buy one buck tickets.  After all three one dollar tickets are more likely to win something than one three dollar one.

No Luck.

Once again I didn't win the million bucks on the Western 6/49.  I got one number on my ticket, which is always better than none, but not the winning level of better.  At least it was only a buck.

Don't Ask Me.

If you're looking for a loan, you'd best ask someone else.  I didn't win the gigantic Lotto 6/49 prize tonight.  I didn't even win ten bucks.  If you won it, congratulations.  And if you feel like giving me some of it, I sure won't say no.

Big Money.

If you buy lottery tickets in Canada you may find the lines a bit long this week.  No  one won the main prize in Canada's national lottery, Lotto 6/49, last night.  So Saturday's prize will be a wopping 55 million, the largest in Canadian history.  Sure, that's not the monster the Powerball lottery in the US has reached, but that's still lots of money.  I'll take it.

 Amongst the throng of buyers I'm sure will be a few people who normally mutter about the lottery being a tax on the stupid, and so on.  Really big prizes tend to do that.

Of course the obvious question is how big the prize for the next draw will be if no one wins on Saturday....

The Right Tool.

As the Canadian penny passes into retirement I'll mention another reason I'll be sad to see it go.  Pennies make an excellent tool for scratching off scratch and win tickets.  I'm thinking I'll hold on to the handful I've got left for just that purpose.  But inevitably I'll lose them from my pocket, so I'll have to try something else eventually.

A Gentle Letdown.

In businesses that sell Western Canada Lottery Corp. tickets in Saskatchewan you'll find ticket checking machines.  If you check a ticket that isn't a winner, the message they display is "Sorry Appears To Be A Non-Winner."  I find the use of the term "non-winner" interesting.  I would imagine this was chosen after consulting an expert on such things.  Presumably there's good money to be made determining the most effective message for electronic displays.  "Non-winner" probably is less likely to offend or upset people than the term loser.

For Want Of A Number.

I didn't notice at the time, but I entered one number wrong on my Western 6/49 ticket slip.  It was one number off from my usual selection of numbers.  The results were devastating.  If I had entered that number properly I would have won.  Instead last night I won nothing.

Just imagine how much different the course of human history would be if I had won that ten bucks.

Just imagine.

Even Odds?

I spend a couple of bucks a week on Western 6/49 lottery tickets. For a dollar you get two lines of six numbers. One is always a "quick pick" by the lotto machine. I bought my ticket for the Wednesday draw today and the quick pick numbers were amusing. They were all multiples of 2: 4, 8, 20, 22, 34, 40. In theory this number combo is just as likely as any other to win the main prize, but I sometimes wonder if such a combination was drawn if WCLC wouldn't do a redraw because people might not believe those numbers were drawn legitimately. Of course if this does turn out to be a winning group of numbers I may be sorry about revealing them here if a visitor decides to try them as well.

Was It You?

Well, it certainly wasn't me. Last night's Lotto 6/49 draw was for what turned out to be a pot of 50.3 million dollars. In the end four different tickets won, three n Ontario and one in Quebec. Each winning ticket is worth $12,574,733. Curses, there goes my plan to buy eastern Saskatoon, erect a force field over it, and declare it the new country of Gueguenlandia. In reality my "wild schemes" if I won all that money didn't go much further than maybe playing an event or two in this year's World Series of Poker. I'd probably lose the money, but you can take that kind of hit when you have 50 mil. The 6/49 is now back to its base prize of 4 million, and no doubt a bunch of people who bought tickets for the last draw are back to claiming "lotteries are a tax on the poor," or something along those lines. Me, I'll readily admit I regularly buy a couple of Western 6/49 tickets a week. The prize may not be as big, but the odds of winning a prize period are better due to each ticket having two sets of 6 numbers. And it's only a buck, versus two bucks for its older brother.

UN Lottery.

Bet you didn't know the UN is in the lottery business. Me neither, but I received an e-mail this morning stating I won on the UN Lottery. It would be interesting to know if using the UN in your scam e-mail will make potential suckers any more likely to bite. All it takes is one I suppose when you send out 8 zillion scam letters every day.

While I'm here let me wish a happy July 4th to my American friends, and say hello to the Singaporeans my last post seems to have attracted here.

Oops, I should have looked at the games a bit more closely. The Massachusetts Keno game pays off on one and two numbers on a two number pick, while the WCLC version only pays off on two numbers on a two number pick.

If you play any of the lotteries in your jurisdiction you might want to take a look at the odds for the various games. I was looking at the Western Canada Lottery Corp. site and it was interesting to compare the winning odds on various lotteries. For example the best odds of winning on a Pick 3 ticket are 1 in 167. Compare this to the Western 6/49 where the odds of winning any prize are 1 in 27.3 So spending a buck on Western 6/49 gives you a better chance of winning something. Unfortunately they don't have the odds for their Keno game which is the one I specifically went looking for. The best winning odds are for their scratch and win tickets. It should be noted that these are the odds for winning a prize on these things, while the odds of winning the big prizes are much higher. For example the odds of winning the one million dollar prize on Western 6/49 are 1 in 6,991,908, so you might want to consider this if you're in the habit of dropping 20 bucks a draw on such things.