Here’s a reminder why you should not get too carried away sharing the excitement of your big win…

A group of 30 factory workers and craftmen from Avellino in Italy won 33 Million Euros on Italy’s SuperEnaLotto in January 2008.

Now winners are normally anonymous in Italy anyway. But the SuperEnaLotto syndicate were obviously very happy with their win and were not quiet about it.

Unfortunately their good fortune reached the ears of the local Camorra crime clan, who asked around to find out the identities of the lucky winners – and then paid them all a visit. Not surprisingly they were successful in extracting 40,000 Euros out of a good number of them, presumably to help with their protection.

Avellino prosecutor Rosario Cantelmo said that police learnt of the pay-outs while investigating extortion rackets against other local businesses. Five suspects were arrested.

So when the day of your big win arrives, and the lottery company asks you to do a press conference, appear on TV or in a newspaper advert… say no and stay anonymous. Have a party to celebrate but don’t announce to the world why. Your life as a big winner will be a lot smoother.

Otherwise you too may find out what happens to lottery winners…

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[A] There are lots of interesting things you can do with old lottery results. You can apply all sorts of analysis on past results, and come up with lots of intriguing things.

Even the lottery companies do it themselves. Many official lottery sites have things like lottery frequency checker tools on them, so you can see how often each ball has been drawn.

But the problem with this kind of analysis, is that it’s entirely useless in predicting what’s going to happen next.

Here’s why…

Lottery Randomness Looks Weird

I know this sounds a bit Douglas Adams but the big problem with randomness is that it can often look so very unrandom.

For something to be truly random, all results have to be possible.

So for there to be any significance in some numbers appearing more often than others, there must by definition be something wrong with the draw process. In others words it isn’t random.

Yes, that’s theoretically possible – but bear in mind lottery companies put an awful lot of effort into ensuring their draws are random.

By all means fire up your Excel spreadsheet, plug in all the past results, and make charts of hit frequency. If you find that kind of stuff fun.

(No offence intended – I’m a maths and probability geek!)

But please don’t be fooled into thinking this kind of analysis will increase your chances of winning the lottery.

It won’t do your chances of winning any harm to play this way, it just won’t improve them any either.

For more help with winning and real stuff you can do to improve your odds, get my free lottery tips course.

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Mega Millions is different to ‘normal’ lottery draws. It’s a ‘power ball’ type draw which means it’s really 2 draws – and you have to win both to get the jackpot.

That’s normally a very bad thing for the player!

But if you want to know just how bad, here’s how you work out your actual chances of winning that big jackpot…

For Mega Millions, you have 5 numbers from 56, so let’s work out how many different possible results there are. And you do that like this:-

56 x 55 x 54 x 53 x 52 divided by 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1
= 3,819,816 possible combinations

The Mega Number Is The Killer…

You also have the ‘Mega’ number which is a separate draw of 1 number from 46. That doesn’t seem so bad, but it actually means there are 46 more ways those 3 million+ possible results from above can happen.

And that does something really nasty to your chances. Because to get the final result you multiply the two like this:-

3,819,816 x 46 = 175,711,536

And that means you only have a 1 in 175 million chance of winning the jackpot..!

It’s Tempting But You Can Do Better

The big jackpot attracts a lot of players. But that jackpot is so big only because it is so damn hard to win.

That’s by design!

The lottery company sell more tickets when the prize is big. But they only get really big prizes when nobody wins, so the jackpot can roll over again and again. And that only happens if the odds of winning are really tough.

And that’s why you only have a 1 in 175 million chance of winning that huge prize.

A Better Chance Of Winning…

Look at the odds for the other lottery games your State runs. Pick a game with a ‘big enough’ prize but better odds.

You can instantly get 5 or 10 times the chance of winning for the same money.

If you state doesn’t offer a game with a better chance, then check out these guys who run a Florida lottery pool. Play with them instead and amazingly your chances of winning are instantly 77 times better than the Mega Millions..!

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Obviously nobody can pick winning numbers in advance, that’s fundamentally impossible. But what you should be doing is everything you can to maximise your chances of winning. And top of that list is one of the most frequently overlooked pieces of advice I can give you… play the right lottery game.

Now the right lottery game for you will depend on:-

• what country you live in
• what games are available
• AND what your goals are in terms of winning

Obviously we all want to win big, right? But what most people really want is ‘life changing’ big. To some people that may be as little as a few thousand pounds/dollars/Euros. To others it may be a lot more. But you need to know this otherwise you can’t make the best decision as to what game to play!

Once you know ‘how much’ will do it for you, then for every lottery game available to you find a) the typical jackpot amount, and b) the odds of winning (check your lottery companies official website for these details).

Now you can wisely pick the game that gives you the best chance of winning the life changing sum of money you’re aiming for. Why play a game with jackpot odds of 1-in-72 million if there is a game with odds of 1-in-5 million that would change your life if you actually did win it?

That little gem of lottery advice alone can instantly double your chances of winning – and maybe even give you up to TEN TIMES the chance. It will cost you nothing to apply it, and goes on working forever! Please add your comment below to let me know how much this improved your winning chances.

If you liked this tip, please use the ‘Share This’ link below to help other people find it.

For more tips on maximising your winning chances, make sure you get our free lottery tips course (oh, and do subcribe to our feed to make sure you get future gems of lottery advice).

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The Blog moved to Lottery-Guy.com – wahay! Only I made the big mistake of thinking a cut-down minimalist blogging application would do the trick. Blosxom was that platform (pronounced ‘blossom’), and to give it credit, Lottery-Guy.com on Blosxom worked. It’s not complicated. It’s fairly customisable. But it can be fiddly just making posts. And it’s hell trying to remember how to spell it, is it Blox-som, or Blos-xom, aaaaagh!

So time for the big guns. Welcome to the all new Wordpress based Lottery-Guy.com blog. Plenty of modern features you the readers should expect from a blog these days. Subscribe, comment, subscribe to comments, Digg me, del.icio.us me, and generally find your way around better (I hope).

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