A lottery is a type of gambling game. A lottery, at its most basic level, entails paying a small sum of money — for example, to buy a lottery ticket — in exchange for the chance to win a large sum of money.
Lotteries do not require any skill. Because lotteries are entirely determined by chance, all you need is to be lucky…extremely lucky! There are many different types of lotteries today, ranging from simple “50/50” drawings at local events (where the winner receives half of the proceeds from ticket sales) to multi-state lotteries with multi-million dollar jackpots.
For the time being, government lotteries are legal in a few Indian states but illegal in others. However, there has been no specific mention of online lotteries. This puts online lotteries in a gray area where it is neither legal nor illegal, regardless of where it is conducted.
The Mega Millions, US Powerball, EuroJackpot, Mega-Sena, Euro Millions, and other international lotteries that accept Indian lottery players are largely regarded as legitimate in India. They are available to play online through lotto betting websites and ticket messenger services.
The only possible exceptions are online lotteries that can be owned and operated privately by any Indian citizen. Such behavior is strictly prohibited. So before proceeding do get acquainted with the lottery laws in India. More than a third of people believe that the only way to retire comfortably is to win the lottery.
However, winning the Powerball or Mega Millions is a one in 292.2 million or one in 302.5 million chance, respectively. Is it really that likely that you’ll win the lottery? The chances of dying as a result of one of these, on the other hand, are much likely:
- 107 to one in a car accident
- 2 million to one chance of falling out of bed
- 118,776 to one: dog mauling
- 3.75 million to one chance of a shark attack
Swimming with sharks turns out to be safer than petting a dog, driving a car, or sleeping in your bed.
If these figures make you feel a little uneasy, don’t worry. Many positive events are also more likely than winning the lottery. The odds of getting a royal flush in the first hand of poker, for example, are only 649,739 to one.
Consider this to put it all in perspective. In 2004, scientists calculated that asteroid 2004 MN4 had a 60-to-one chance of colliding with Earth on April 13, 2029. The asteroid is about a quarter-mile wide, making it larger than the asteroid that carved out Arizona’s Meteor Crater. And it was still more likely to hit the planet than you winning the lottery.
Fortunately for living beings, scientists have revised their predictions for the asteroid; it is no longer expected to hit the planet directly, but rather to pass close by. You have an equal chance of winning the lottery.
If you’ve read all of these statistics and still want to play the lottery, there are a few things you can do to increase your odds. First, use the computer-generated numbers because they are the luckiest and have a lower chance of being duplicated by someone else. Whatever you do, avoid the “lucky” numbers of seven, eleven, or a birthday; you can be sure that someone else has chosen those numbers as well.
Make sure to play the Powerball’s second prize of $1 million or $2 million, where you only need to match five of the six numbers. Those are 11.6 million to one odds. If you only play in state lotteries rather than the national ones, your chances are even better.
Of course, someone has to win the lottery, and the only way to win it is to enter it. But how do you get the most out of it? According to the laws of probability, playing the lottery frequently does not increase your chances of winning.
So each time you play the lottery, there is an independent probability—much like a coin toss, where each toss has a one in two chance of landing on heads, regardless of the number of tosses. In both the lottery and the coin toss, the odds remain the same regardless of how often you play.
However, you can improve your chances by purchasing more lottery tickets for the same drawing. Keep in mind, however, that purchasing two tickets may increase your odds from one in 14 million to two in 14 million, which is not a statistically significant increase. To significantly increase the chances of winning, someone would have to purchase a large number of tickets.
Even if a person could afford it, they would not be able to buy enough lottery tickets to ensure a win unless they were the only ones doing so. The odds of winning inversely decrease as more tickets are sold collectively.
If you’re one of those who think winning the lottery is the best way to retire, think about this: Assume you’ve been buying a $2 lottery ticket every week for the past 20 years. Based on the odds, there is a slim chance that you would have won.
If you had put that $2 a week into securities and received a 5% return, you would have amassed $3,571. It may not seem like much, but if you invested $2 every day for 20 years, you’d end up with $25,084. The average stock market return is 10% per year; if you invested $2 per day for 20 years, your $2 would grow to $46,625. That may not be enough to retire on, but if you increased it to $5 per day, you’d have $116,563 by the end of the year. You could get $233,127 if you spent $10 every day. Now you’re expressing yourself!
The point is that planning for retirement gives you a better chance of a successful retirement than playing the lottery. You don’t have to rely on chance, luck, or fate. Starting today, you can take control of the situation.
Conclusion
If you saved the $2 it takes to buy a lottery ticket, you could save $60 per month if you played the lottery every chance you got. That’s an extra $720 in your savings each year that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. While it may not be as thrilling as winning the lottery, it can add up over time.
Santosh Kumar is a Professional SEO and Blogger, With the help of this blog he is trying to share top 10 lists, facts, entertainment news from India and all around the world.