What are the odds?
The High Halstow Community Lottery
Our odds depend on the number of players. Presently we have around 200 players and this figure is slowing increasing. So with odds of 200-1 you have a chance of winning £1,250 and the £200 second prize.
As more local people see the increasing prize being won and the good causes our lottery will help in High Halstow. Ours is a public lottery so anyone can play so we do have players from outside the village but this is healthy and swells the pot.
We are aiming for the maximum prize allowed on our Licence which is £20,000 monthly. If even a tenth of people on the peninsula played then we would reach our goal easily.
The UK’s National Lottery recently added more balls to its Lotto machines, meaning that the chances of winning the jackpot are smaller.
The odds were one in 14 million. With the new numbers added it is more like one in 45 million.
Clearly one in 45m is much less likely than one in 14m. But these probabilities are so small that it’s hard to get a feel for what they mean. Perhaps it’s easier to imagine how long it would take before you can reasonably expect to win, if you enter one ticket each draw: with two draws a week, under the old system you’d have to wait 134,000 years. Under the new system it’s 432,000 years. Quite a while, either way.
The Health Lottery
The Health was launched in 2011 and gets its name from the fact that 20% of the money raised goes to health-related charities. You buy a £1 ticket at a retail outlet – they are sold in numerous supermarkets and corner shops – and you stand the chance of winning up to £100,000.
Your chances of winning the jackpot are one in two million. Those are much shorter odds than on the National Lottery but the prize is much smaller.