The national lottery has had many TV hosts presenting the programme since being aired n television, some of them including Dale Winton, Gary Barlow, Athena Turner and Noel Edmonds.

It is known to be the UK’s biggest millionaire making game and it is said that over 70% of the UK’s population is already playing on a weekly basis and that this is continuing to increase. The lotto game is one of pure chance, people that play for profit try to research and analyse past winning numbers to create their number combination in order to increase the chances of them winning that jackpot prize.

In order to play, you select six different numbers between one and forty-nine, these are known as the main numbers, then you select another number between one and, this is known as the bonus ball. This bonus number can be the same as one of the numbers previously selected as a main number.

The draw takes place using two machines that are shaped like balls, one of them for the main numbers and the other for the bonus numbers. Each machine is filled with balls, each ball representing one of the numbers, then the machine shuffles the balls continuously throughout the selection process, one ball is selected at a time until all balls have been selected, it is the same process for the bonus ball but only one ball is selected.

To ensure all draws are 100% fair, Camelot do a series of checks which include the inspection of all balls for wear and tear so that no ball has a higher probability of being picked then others.

In order to win a cash prize you need to match a minimum of three numbers… here are the prizes available and how many numbers you have to match in order to qualify

3 numbers is a prize of £10

4 numbers is typically a prize of £65

5 numbers is typically a prize of £1,500

And 6 numbers gets you that jackpot prize which is typically around £2 million.

A UK based company known as virtual world direct created the e-lottery syndicate scheme in 2002. Creating such a scheme has given people who share an interest in the lottery games, the ability to be part of a membership-based opportunity to increase their chances of winning cash prizes.

VWD have since developed their scheme to increase the variety of lotteries available to their members. They can now participate in syndicates for UK lotto, Euro millions (raffle included), and Spanish super draws such as elGordo. Also to encourage more members to join in their syndicates they give away golden tickets with purchases of lottery tickets. These golden tickets are then entered into two prize draws, a monthly one and a yearly one. The monthly draw has had prizes such as i-pods, digital cameras, mobile phones and net books. The yearly draw has much bigger prizes, known to be cars, last year’s winner was David Jenkins who got to drive away a brand new mini that day. This year’s prize has also been confirmed to be a mini.

The syndicates are created using all the different number selections for each game; each syndicate has a limited number for the amount of members that can join it. As VWD participate in the UK’s biggest rollover jackpot game, the limitations to the number of members in each syndicate ensure all participants receive a fair sum of the prize, if it was unlimited people could end up winning tiny silly amounts like a penny or a percentage of a penny. There are 49 spaces in each of the UK lotto syndicate and more spaces in the Euro millions syndicate. If a particular syndicate you wish to join is full, you can join another while you wait for a space to become available.

With so many people playing, Camelot has to ensure the draws are 100% fair. In order to do this they check every ball for dents or anything else that could increase the chances of that particular ball being drawn. They do this for all their lottery games (Euro millions, daily play, thunder ball, lotto hotpicks and dream number).

With the amount of people playing and purchasing more then one ticket, odds of winning that jackpot are very small. People began playing in groups, known as a syndicate. Everyone participating would pay the same amount of money in order to buy tickets, and then any winnings from all the tickets purchased would be shared equally between all players. By joining a syndicate, players can increase their chances f winning without any extra cost.

With such high demand for syndicates, a UK company called VWD (virtual world direct) created an online syndicate system in 2002, known as e-lottery. The e-lottery opportunity has become the solution for many disputes. Creating syndicates with friends, family, and colleagues there are many disputes regarding how mach money people have put in, who is responsible for purchasing tickets, who is responsible to keep hold of and check all tickets, weather any winnings are divided equally and so on.

Joining e-lottery could make such disputes a thing of the past. All winnings are worked out and get paid automatically. Winnings are collect in your e-lottery account then around every 3 months you receive a cheque of all winnings you have accumulated over that period of time.

We looked at many options, many of them actually turned out to be scams, which we quickly avoided. Then a family member told us about e-lottery, at first we were a little concerned it may be another scam as we had already stumbled across a fair few. This was not the case.

As we hadn’t heard of e-lottery before, we done some research and later joined. When researching about the e-lottery we discovered that it was an online way to play the lottery within a syndicate. For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a syndicate is here’s a quick explanation, a syndicate gives people that share the same interest the ability to join a membership-based opportunity to increase their odds.

So further research led us to the information that a syndicate is a great way to increase the chances we had of winning any cash prizes with the lottery without actually costing us any more money. However all winnings are shared out equally between the players in the winning syndicate, but you do win the smaller cash prizes more often.

Since we joined, our syndicate has won over £900 which we have won a share of.

We recently received our very first cheque of these winnings. The amount wasn’t huge but it was still exciting for us. It allowed us to buy a slide for our two year old twins, just seeing the eyes sparkle with excitement and huge smiles on their face made it all worth while. We are now looking forward to winning more cash prizes to spoil them further.

Follow This Link And Check Out E-Lottery Like We Did

To ensure that the lottery draws are always 100% fair, Camelot go as far as to check every ball for wear and tear so that no ball is more likely to be picked than any of the others. They also have statistics experts analyzing draw data to ensure any bias is spotted and investigated thoroughly.

Another question I have asked myself is what happens if I purchase a lottery ticket in store and win a cash prize. Do I take it to the shop I purchased it from? What if the retailer refuses to pay me my winnings?

If you purchase your lottery tickets through one of the thousands of lottery retailers and you win a large sum of money it may not be possible to return to that retailer to claim your prize.  In order to resolve any such dispute an all to the national lottery line will help you to claim your prize.

Thousands of people like to research a product before they purchase it, many household electrical items sold online have the option to have a review written so you can generally get an idea of how good a product is just by reading a few of the reviews. This isn’t the case with the lottery, many people see the winners announced in the papers or hear it on the news and that acts as a review for the majority of people.

Photo Credit: David Jones/PA

In 2005 Keith Gough won £9 million on the National Lottery, he immediately went on a spending spree, blowing millions on property, drinking and horse racing. According to Nick Britten of The Daily Telegraph he even blew a fair whack of cash on an executive box over at Aston Villa.

In This article, Nick shares the news of Keith’s death, apparently caused by a heart attack caused by his money worries…

Last year Gough said he regretted winning the money.He said:

My life was brilliant. But the lottery has ruined everything. What’s the point of having money when it sends you to bed crying?

Apparently Keith also became a target for fraudsters, In June 2009, James Prince was jailed for 3 years after being found guilt of two counts of fraud of and count of money laundering. Prince took figures of around £700,000 from Keith Gough.

It just goes to show that you gotta be careful when it comes to a lottery win!

We’ve been noticing a few sites advertising their euromillions syndicates within Google Adwords, particularly on the content network recently (that just means web sites and blogs that show google ads, not the main google search results pages) and frankly, when we’ve been along to check out those sites we’ve got a little scared!

It would seem that there’s a few companies that have decided to pretty much copy what VWD are doing, to be honest, it’s hardly surprising and VWD should probably take it as a bit of a compliment that someone would want to copy their smarter way to play.

We recommend you run a few checks before you choose to play in an online lottery syndicate, here’s a few suggestions:

1. Go straight to the contact page of the website and make sure you can get hold of customer services. Any company that takes your money and promises to put you in a lottery syndicate ought to be able to handle a telephone call, even if it’s only during office hours. Phone them up and ask a few questions about the syndicates, find out if they’re professional and if they are real.

2. Make sure that if you decide to play that you are instantly dropped into a lottery syndicate. If the company you choose to play with doesn’t then you know you’re likely to be headed for problems. We’ve noticed some sites that won’t issue your syndicate place for 48 hours, that tells us that there’s a whole load of manual intervention going on and the systems are probably not automated and very likely not to be up to scratch.

3. Just because a website advertises on Google doesn’t mean that Google approves of the company! Seriously, Google will quite happily take advertisers money and they’ll even supply some templates and bits and pieces to make the ads look very nice but they won’t ‘advocate and approve’ a website that advertises with them.

4. This applies to ANY online transaction… DO NOT PUT YOUR CREDIT CARD DETAILS INTO ANY WEB PAGE THAT IS NOT SECURED. We feel really, really strongly about this because it is so important. Online retailers make a big fuss about this because it is SO IMPORTANT. If you go typing your credit card details into a page that is not secured you are running the risk of being ripped off, any company that encourages and allows you to enter your details into a page that is not secured is down right irresponsible and completely unprofessional, and, if that’s the company’s attitude to YOUR ONLINE SECURITY then think very very carefully before you do anything. How do you know if a web page is secured? Generally, you see the padlock appear in Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or whatever your favourite browser happens to be, also, the web address begins with HTTPS not just HTTP, have a read of this page if you need more info:  http://info.ssl.com/article.aspx?id=10068 and please, head this warning and help put a stop to online fraud and identity theft.

5. Insure the company’s lottery syndicate you join is a member of the lotteries council or other such governing or regulatory body, this organisations are there to protect you, the consumer from being ‘ripped off’. If a company operating a syndicate chooses not to associate with these types of groups, it just goes to show they have something to hide…

We hope you have found this article useful, it’s come about because we’re fed up with seeing people taken for a ride and having the good name of legitimate, legal and well organised businesses marred by these sub-standard websites owned by people trying to make a quick buck!

Have you had a bad online experience?

Have you noticed any of these ‘dodgy sites’?

Have you got any good advice for people wanting to join online lottery syndicates?

Feel free to leave your comments!

The offer incorporates:

1. A GUARANTEED Win within 12 weeks of joining a euro millions syndicate, this is backed by a 100% Money Back Guarantee

2. A Free Week in a UK Lotto Syndicate, this allows a syndicate player to take part in one Saturday and one Wednesday UK Lotto draw as a member of one of the syndicates.

3. Golden Tickets, When playing in the lottery syndicates, players are handed a  ‘Golden Ticket’ which will be used for prizes, cash equivalents and even a brand new BMW Mini. The Golden Ticket draw takes place every 4 weeks along with a superdraw for the BMW Mini taking place every year.

This is a fantastic offer from VWD and we expect to see the membership grow rapidly from over 270,000 users in a very short space of time.

You can check out the EuroMillions Offer by clicking this link Your Euromillions Guaranteed Win

I have been asked this question now on several occasions now, here is the answer:

Each Euro millions syndicate has 36 lines in each draw. The tickets each syndicate uses are purchased in the UK, so, each syndicate also has 36 Raffle tickets.
Because the raffle numbers are allocated to the ticket ‘randomly’ the number on each ticket is not published by vwd… it would simply take too long to enter each one into the system.

The winning raffle ticket number is published on the national website every week

However, should your syndicate win the raffle, you will definately be notified by VWD and you will of course win your share of the raffle prize

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