6 Tips on how to make sure a dream Euromillions win doesn’t turn into a nightmare.
With tonight’s Euromillions Jackpot at £51 million, a Jackpot win would catapult you into the Sunday Times Rich List next to Gwyneth Paltrow and Cliff Richard. Here are 6 tips to make sure you win as much as possible and make sure you avoid the downside of winning the Lotto rollover win of your Dreams.
Go early:
When Rollover Jackpots get big, so do the queues, so get your numbers in plenty of time. Or play online. The worst Lottery queues are seen in America, when Megamillions Jackpots which have exceeded £400 million have caused residents of Nevada and Utah to pour over the borders into California to get their tickets. Queues of 2-3 hours at border convenience store and petrol stations are not unknown additional reading.
Neither a borrower or lender be:
In 2008, Ida Cody sued the husband she separated from 25 years before for a share of his $1.9 million Lottery winnings. Ida from Florida claimed he had borrowed $20 to play the lottery. She lost her claim, but to be on the safe side – If you are going to buy a lottery ticket – make sure you pay for it yourself.
Get organised:
If you play in a syndicate, make sure that it is organised and that everybody knows the numbers you are choosing. Five construction workers who claimed a colleague cheated them out of their share of a multimillion-dollar lottery jackpot have been awarded $4 million each by a New Jersey jury in March 2012. A unanimous verdict was reached Wednesday morning by the jury, which heard the lawsuit in state Superior Court in Elizabeth. The panel rejected the claims of Americo Lopes, 52, who had claimed he won the 2009 jackpot on a personal ticket – not with a ticket he bought as part a lottery pool with the co-workers. The easiest route would be to use the syndicate kit and agreement on the national Lottery website.
Don’t get organised:
No matter what you hear about Lottery systems, number schemes etc, the odds of winning the Euromillions Jackpot is over 116 million to 1 and it is totally random. If you are a fan of hot numbers, the most frequently drawn Euromillions numbers are 50, 12, 4, 19 and 14. If you believe that the least drawn balls are more likely to come up, you should go for 32,44,48,33 and 43. However, each draw is not dependent on the previous one, so predictions based on previous draws won’t increase your chances of winning. Indeed, as lots of other people may share this pattern based approach, if you DO win, you are likely to be sharing your prize with lots of others.
Do a High Five:
However your choice of numbers can mean that you are less likely to share a mega win. Many people choose birthdays as their favourite numbers, which means that if you choose most of your numbers below 31 you are more likely to be sharing your winnings with other winners. An article in the Daily Mail in 2009 gave the most popular numbers chosen as 3, 5, 7, 11, 23, 27 and the least popular numbers chosen as 32, 35, 37, 38, 43, and 46. A study of the Swiss lottery suggested that you make sure your numbers total over 177 to improve your chances keeping that big Jackpot for yourself.
Check and Check again
It sounds stupid, but check the results carefully. In May this year in Arkansas, Sharon Duncan trashed a $1 million lottery ticket which was picked up and claimed by dumpster diving Sharon Jones. This being America, the inevitable court case is ongoing, with the initial judgment forcing the trash lady to pay the money back to the purchaser. And finally in March 2012 newsagents Alfred and Anne Jeevarajah were jailed for 14 months after trying to claim a pensioner’s winning lottery ticket worth £156,659. They had told Gwyn Badham-Davies that the win was worth only £10, and then waited a week before contacting Camelot and claiming the prize as their own.
So if YOU are this week’s Euromillions winner, just a 6 simple steps will stop your lotto dream becoming a nightmare.