Winning Formula

I won the lottery! Yes, it's true. After several long months of getting absolutely nowhere, I finally landed a winning line in Saturday's Lotto game. Okay, I only matched three numbers to win £10, but a win is a win, and even a small amount like £10 has raised a surprising conundrum for me...

The dilemma is this: Should I take the £10 (£7 of which is profit) and use it to buy ten lines for the next draw? Or should I stick to my usual three lines and spend the profit on something sensible?

It's just £7, I know, and not really worth worrying about, but my decision here may well set a precedent for the future. What if I win £100 next time? Or £1,000? The question of whether it makes any sense to invest more in the next lottery just because I won a prize in the last one is worth thinking about.

Most people, as far as I can tell, adopt a very loose rule on this topic. If they win a small amount they tend to invest the winnings in more tickets for the following draw. If they win a modest amount - say £50 or more - they tend to buy a few more tickets than normal but keep the rest for themselves. And of course, if they win a massive amount they tend to be far too busy writing shopping lists to concern themselves with the next lottery draw at all.

What I want here is a general principle - a rule of thumb that I can apply no matter how much I win. And I think I've cracked it. Here's my solution:

1) For wins of less than £100, invest 10% of the win in additional tickets for the next lottery draw.

2) For wins of £100 or more, invest 5% of the win in additional tickets, up to a maximum of £25.
[Note: The "maximum of £25" clause here is just to keep things sensible. Personally I could never imagine myself spending hundreds of pounds on lottery tickets even if I'd won £100,000 the week previously, but that's just me.]

By applying this formula, I should spend an extra £1 on the lottery for the next draw. If I had won £50, I should spend an extra £5 on the lottery, and so on.

The beauty of this approach is that I will never again be thrown into a philosophical spin by a minor lottery win. I'm not suggesting that everyone adopts the same formula, but I do think that all lottery players should think about setting their own rules of thumb that can be applied in a similarly straightforward manner when they win a non-jackpot prize.

I know, maybe I do think about these things a little too much. But hey, what can I say? That's why they call me the Lotteryman...

Article Last Updated: 01/05/2007 13:39:28

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