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Lottery Guides
19 articles
- 🛂When the Prize Isn't Money: Green Cards, School Places, and the Draft Lottery That Wasn't RandomSome lotteries hand out things money cannot reliably buy: a visa, a place at a school, a year of your life. Nobody enters them for fun, and the draw has to be beyond argument. On 1 December 1969 the United States ran one that wasn't - and the flaw was visible to anyone who plotted the results on graph paper.11 min
- 🗳️Why You Pick Numbers at All: A Genoese Election and the Invention of Modern LottoTicking numbers on a grid feels like the obvious way to run a lottery. It is actually an accident of Renaissance politics. The format descends from betting on which five men would be drawn to Genoa's governing council - and Italy still plays 1 to 90 because the candidate roster ran to 90 names. There was a rival format, older and simpler. It lost. One famous lottery still plays it.11 min
- ⚖️Is the Lottery a Tax on the Poor? What the Evidence Actually SaysIt is the oldest accusation aimed at state lotteries, and it is usually thrown as a slogan rather than a claim. The research behind it is real, more specific than most people repeat, and it turns on one definition almost every argument gets wrong - plus a quieter problem with the 'funds education' promise that deserves more attention than the headline ever gets.12 min
- 🏪The Lucky Shop Myth: Why Half of Madrid Queues at the Same Lottery CounterEvery December, people stand in line for hours outside one shop off Puerta del Sol to buy a ticket they could get anywhere in Spain in thirty seconds. There is a real reason Doña Manolita sells so many winners - it just isn't luck. And in El Gordo's case there's a genuine wrinkle most explanations get wrong.10 min
- 📮The Lottery That Runs on Regret: How the Postcode Lottery Uses Your NeighboursAlmost every lottery sells hope. One sells something sharper - the fear of watching your entire street celebrate without you. The Dutch Postcode Lottery made your address the ticket number, and two behavioural scientists proved the design works exactly as it looks like it does.10 min
- 🤖The Lottery Where You Can't Lose Your Stake: ERNIE, Premium Bonds, and the Codebreakers Who Built ItBritain has run a lottery since 1957 in which nobody loses their money - you can cash out at full face value any time. The machine that picks the winners was built by the engineers behind Bletchley Park's Colossus. And the catch, once you find it, is the clearest lesson in expected value anywhere in gambling.11 min
- 🏛️The Lottery Built That: The British Museum, the Sydney Opera House, and One Myth Everyone RepeatsBefore income tax was normal, governments raised money from people who volunteered to hand it over. The receipts are still standing: a museum in Bloomsbury, an opera house on the harbour, the first English settlement in America. And the most famous story in the whole lineage is almost certainly false.11 min
- 🚩How Lottery Scams Really Work, and the One Sentence That Beats Them AllThe message is always good news: you've won a huge international lottery. There's just one small step first - a fee, a tax, an insurance payment to release the money. That small step is the entire scam. Here's how advance-fee lottery fraud actually operates, the industrial 876 operation behind much of it, and the single sentence that dismantles every version.10 min
- 🎁The Opposite of the Lottery Curse: The Winners Who Gave It All AwayThe bankruptcies and regrets get the headlines. But some winners did the opposite - a Nova Scotia couple who kept almost nothing of CAD 11.3 million, a Calgary father who gave away his entire CAD 40 million jackpot, the Connollys who shared £115 million from a list of names. What the givers had in common turns out to have very little to do with luck.10 min
- 🪙How Scratch Cards Really Work, and the Statistician Who Cracked OneA scratch card feels like a tiny lottery draw in your palm. It isn't. Every winner is decided at the printing factory, long before the card reaches a shop - and in 2003 a Toronto statistician noticed that the losing tickets were quietly telling him which ones they were.10 min
- 🎟️Unclaimed Lottery Prizes: The £63 Million Ticket Nobody Came Back ForIn the summer of 2012, someone in Hertfordshire bought a EuroMillions ticket worth £63.8 million - and never claimed it. The money went to charity and the winner stayed a mystery forever. It is the most dramatic example of something quietly common: a lottery ticket is cash with an expiry date, and a surprising amount of it is simply thrown away.10 min
- 🔢How to Pick Lottery Numbers: Why Your Birthday Could Cost You a FortuneNo combination is ever 'due', hot and cold numbers are noise, and Quick Pick isn't lucky. But number choice still controls one thing almost everyone gets backwards - not your odds of winning, but how many strangers you'd split the jackpot with. Just ask the 133 UK winners who shared one prize.11 min
- 🎱Are Lottery Draws Rigged? How Draws Really Work, and the One Time Someone Beat ThemA televised draw is one of the most heavily controlled procedures in all of gambling: weighed balls, randomly chosen machines, independent auditors, locked rooms. For decades, 'can a draw be rigged?' had a boring answer - no. Then the man whose job was to secure the draw computers found the one weak point.12 min
- 💸The Lottery Curse: Why Big Winners Go Broke, and What the Data Actually SaysJack Whittaker won $314.9 million one Christmas and called it the worst thing that ever happened to him. The 'lottery curse' isn't superstition - it's a predictable collision of lump-sum money, sudden visibility, and human psychology. Here is the evidence, the real cases, and the part nobody can source.12 min
- 🕶️Can You Stay Anonymous After Winning the Lottery? A Country-by-Country GuideThe same jackpot can leave you an unknown private citizen in one country and a front-page name across the border. Here is where anonymity is the default, where disclosure is mandatory, and how the US trust-and-LLC workaround actually fits in.11 min
- 💰Annuity vs. Lump Sum: The Real Math Behind U.S. Lottery PayoutsThe advertised Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot is not the cash on hand - it is the gross total of 30 graduated payments over 29 years. Here is why the cash factor moves with bond yields, how taxes interact with each option, and at what investment rate the lump sum actually wins.12 min
- 🤝Lottery Syndicates Explained: Stefan Mandel, Office Pools, and the Math of Group PlayFrom a Romanian-Australian mathematician who won 14 jackpots by buying every combination to office pools that ended in court: how lottery syndicates actually work, and what the math says about pooling tickets.11 min
- 🌏Top 10 Most Played Lotteries in the WorldWhich lotteries attract the most people globally? From El Gordo in Spain to the huge Chinese lotteries – here are the 10 most played lotteries.6 min
- 🎲Expected Value of Lotteries: What Do You Get Back for €100?Mathematical analysis: How much money do you statistically get back from different lotteries? We calculate the expected value for 11 major lotteries.12 min