lottery

something that is regarded as a chance event

"the election was just a lottery to them" players buy (or are given) chances and prizes are distributed by casting lots

For other articles concerned with Lotteries see Lottery (disambiguation).A lottery is a popular form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. Some governments forbid it, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national lottery.

Countries with a national lottery - beckons customers to purchase takarakuji tickets in Tokyo, Japan.]]

Austria: ''Lotto 6 aus 45'' and ''Zahlenlotto''

Australia: ''Lotto'', ''Powerball (Australia)Powerball'', and various others

Belgium: ''Loterie Nationale'' or ''Nationale Loterij''

Brazil: ''Mega-Sena'' and various others

Canada: ''Lotto 6/49'' and ''Super 7''

Dominican Republic: ''leidas,s.a.''

Denmark: ''Lotto''

Finland: ''Lotto''

France: ''La Française des Jeux''

Germany: ''Lotto 6 aus 49'' and ''Spiel 77'' and ''Super 6''

Hong Kong: ''Mark Six''

Ireland: ''The National Lottery''

Israel: "lotto", "pais"

Italy: ''Superenalotto''

Japan: ''Takarakuji''

Mexico: ''Lotería Nacional para la Asistencia Pública''

Netherlands: ''staatsloterij.nl - Staatsloterij''

New Zealand: ''Lotto''

Norway: ''lotto.no - Lotto''

Poland: ''lotto.pl - Lotto''

Portugal: ''jogossantacasa.pt - Lotaria Clássica'' and ''jogossantacasa.pt - Lotaria Popular''

Puerto Rico: ''hacienda.gobierno.pr - Lotería Tradicional'' & ''loteriaelectronicapr.com - Lotería Electrónica''

Romania: ''loto.ro - Loteria Romana - 6/49, 5/40, Pronosport''

Russia: ''Sportloto''

Serbia and Montenegro: ''Narodna Lutrija''

South Africa: '' lotto.co.za - South African National Lottery''

South Korea: ''Lotto''

Spain: ''Loterías y Apuestas del Estado''

United Kingdom: formerly ''The National Lottery'', now ''Lotto''Lotteries come in many formats. The prize can be fixed cash or goods. In this format there is risk to the organizer if insufficient tickets are sold. The prize can be a fixed percentage of the receipts. A popular form of this is the "50-50" draw where the organizers promise that the prize will be 50% of the revenue. The prize may be guaranteed to be unique where each ticket sold has a unique number. Many recent lotteries allow purchasers to select the numbers on the lottery ticket resulting in the possibility of multiple winners.Lotteries are most often run by governments or local states and are sometimes described as a regressive tax, since those most likely to buy tickets will typically be the less affluent members of a society. The astronomically high odds against winning have also led to the epithet of a "tax on stupidity". The phrase is largely rhetorical (playing the lottery is voluntary; taxes are not), but it is intended to suggest that lotteries are governmental revenue-raising mechanisms that will attract only those consumers who fail to see that the game is a very bad deal. Indeed, the desire of lottery operators to guarantee themselves a profit requires that a lottery ticket be worth substantially less than what it costs to buy. After taking into account the present value of the lottery prize as a single lump sum cash payment, the impact of any taxes that might apply, and the likelihood of having to share the prize with other winners, it is not uncommon to find that a ticket for a typical major lottery is worth less than one third of its purchase price. Playing the lottery certainly does not prove stupidity, but neither is it an act of economic rationality. However, the goal of some players may not be to win the game, but merely to have a thrill and indulge in a fantasy of possibly becoming wealthy. This is particularly popular among those who believe their chances of becoming rich are already zero, so even if the lottery's odds are awful, they are better than zero.

Lottery in the United States - In the United States, the existence of lotteries is subject to the laws of each state; there is no national lottery. Before the advent of state-sponsored lotteries, many illegal lotteries thrived; for example, see Numbers game and Peter H. Matthews. The first state lottery in the U.S. was established in the state of New Hampshire in 1964; today, lotteries are established in forty states and the District of Columbia. On October 8, 1970, New York held the first million United States dollardollar lottery drawing.The first modern interstate lottery in the U.S. was Tri-State Lotto. Tri-State Lotto was formed in 1985 and linked the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. In 1988, the Multi-State Lottery Association was formed with Oregon, Iowa, Kansas, Rhode Island, West Virginia and the Washington, DCDistrict of Columbia as its charter members; it is best known for its "Powerball" drawing, which is designed to build up very large jackpots. Another interstate lottery, The Big Game (now called Mega Millions), was formed in 1996 by the states of Georgia (U.S. state)Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan and Virginia as its charter members.Other interstate lotteries include: Hot Lotto, Lotto South, and Wild Card 2. ''For more detailed information on U.S. lotteries, see'' Lotteries in the United StatesLottery (U.S.).With the advent of the Internet it became possible for people to play on-line, many times for free (the cost of the ticket being supplemented by merely seeing, say, a pop-up ad). Slight wanings in the overall number of people playing by "traditional" ways (paper ticket, $1 per chance) caused several states to combine into multi-state pools of much larger winning amounts.Some of the many websites which offer free games (after registration) include www.iwinweekly.com and the larger iwon.com, which is backed by the CBS broadcasting corporation. GTech Corporation, in the United States, administrates 70% of the worldwide online and instant lottery business, according to its website.See also: Keno

Lottery in Canada - The first lottery in Canada was Quebec's Inter-Loto in 1970. Other provinces and regions introduced their own lotteries through the 1970s, and the federal government ran Loto Canada (originally the Olympic Lottery) for several years starting in the late 1970s to help recoup the expenses of the 1976 Summer Olympics. Today, Canada has two nation-wide lotteries: Lotto 6/49 (which started in 1982), and Lotto Super 7 (which started in 1994). These games are administered by the Interprovincial Lottery Corporation, which is a consortium of the five regional lottery commissions, all of which are owned by their respective provincial and territorial governments:

Atlantic Lottery Corporation (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador)

Loto-Québec (Quebec)

Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (Ontario)

Western Canada Lottery Corporation (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, Nunavut)

British Columbia Lottery Corporation (British Columbia)All five regional corporations offer additional regional lotteries that are played only in their respective regions.

Lottery in France - The first known lottery in France was created by King Francis I of FranceFrancis I in or around 1505. After that first attempt, lotteries were forbidden for two centuries.They reappeared at the end of 17th century, as a "public lottery" for the Paris municipality (called ''Loterie de L'Hotel de Ville'') and as "private" ones for religionreligious orders (mostly for nuns in convents).Lotteries became quickly one of the most important resources for religious congregations in the 18th century.Lotteries helped to build or rebuild many churches (about 15 including the biggest ones) in Paris during the 18th century, including St Sulpice and Le Panthéon.At the beginning of the century, the King avoided having to fund religious orders by giving them the right to run lotteries, but the amounts generated became so large that the second part of the century turned into a struggle between the monarchy and the Church for control of the lotteries. In 1774, the ''Loterie de L'École Militaire'' was founded by the monarchy (by Mme de Pompadour to be precise, to buy what is called today the ''Champ de Mars'' in Paris, and build a Military Academy that Napoleon Bonaparte would later attend) and all other lotteries, with 3 or 4 minor exceptions, were forbidden.This lottery became known a few years later as the ''Loterie Royale de France''. Just before the French Revolution (1789) the revenues from La Lotterie Royale de France were equivalent to between 5 and 7% of total French revenues.Throughout the 18th century, philosophers like Voltaire as well as some bishops complained that lotteries exploit the poor. This subject has generated much oral and written debate over the morality of the lottery.All lotteries (including state lotteries) were frowned upon by idealism#Other usesidealists of the French Revolution, who viewed them as a method used by the rich for cheating the poor out of their wages.The Lottery reappeared in France in 1936, called ''loto'', when socialismsocialists needed to increase state revenue. Since that time, ''La Française des Jeux'' (government owned) has had a monopoly on most of the games in France, including the lotteries.

Probability of winning - The probabilitychances of winning a lottery jackpot are principally determined by several factors: the count of possible numbers, the count of winning numbers drawn, whether or not order is significant and whether drawn numbers are returned for the possibility of further drawing.In a typical 6 from 49 lotto, 6 numbers are drawn from 49 and if the 6 numbers on a ticket match the numbers drawn, the ticket holder is a jackpot winner - this is true regardless of the order in which the numbers are drawn. The odds of being a jackpot winner are approximately 1 in 14 million (13,983,816 to be exact). The derivation of this result is a simple exercise in Lotto MathcombinatoricsTo put these odds in context, supppose one buys one lottery ticket per week. 13,983,816 weeks is roughly 269,000 years; In the quarter-million years of play, one would only win the jackpot once.The odds of winning any actual lottery can vary widely depending lottery design. "Powerball" is a very popular multistate lottery in the United States which is known for jackpots that grow very large from time to time. This attractive feature is made possible simply by designing the game to be extremely difficult to win: 1 chance in 120,526,770. That's almost nine times smaller than the example above. Powerball players also pick six numbers, but two different "bags" are used. The first five numbers come from one bag that contains numbers from 1 to 53. The sixth number -- the "Powerball number" -- comes from the second bag, which contains numbers from 1 to 42. To win a powerball jackpot, a player's five regular numbers must match the five regular numbers drawn and the Powerball number must match the Powerball number drawn. In other words, it is not good enough to pick 10, 18, 25, 33, 42, 7 when the drawing is 7, 10, 25, 33, 42, 18. Even though the player picked all the right numbers, the Powerball number at the end of the ticket doesn't match the one drawn, so the ticket would be credited with matching only four numbers (10, 25, 33, 42).Most lotteries give lesser prizes for matching just some of the winning numbers. The Powerball game described above is an extreme case, giving a very small payout (US$3) even if a player matches only the Powerball number at the end of your ticket. Matching more numbers, the payout goes up. Although none of these additional prizes affect the chances of winning the jackpot, they do improve the odds of winning something and therefore add a little to the value of the ticket.

Notable prizes - Sources: !http://www.usamega.com/archive -052000.htm? !http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor ld/europe/4746057.stmOn? 20 September 2005 a primary school boy in Italy won £27.6 million in the national lottery. Although children are not allowed to gamble under Italian law, the children are allowed to play the lottery. ? dailyrecord.co.uk

Payment of prizes - The payment of a lotto prizes is not always a lumpsum amount. In countries like USA the winner gets to choose from either an annuity payment or a one time payment. The one time payment is often about half of the advertised lotto jackpot. The annuity payment makes regular payments for periods from 10 to 40 years. In some online lottos the yearly payments can be as low as $25,000 for 40 years with a balloon payment on the final year. This type of installment payment is often made through investment in government-backed securities. Online lottos payout the winners through their insurance backup. However a majority of winners choose to take the lumpsum payment as they believe they can get a better rate of return on their investment elsewhere.

Scams and Frauds - Lottery like any mechanism is susceptible to fraud despite the high degree to scrutiny offered by the organisers. One method involved is to tamper the machine used for the number selection. By rigging a machine it is theoritically easy to win a lottery. This act is often done in connivance with an employee of the lottery firm. Methods used vary; loaded balls where select balls are made to popup making it either lighter or heavier than the rest. Many other ingenious methods too have been employed Some scams on the internet too are based on the lottos. The modus operandi of this fraud is the trickster sends spam to all email users in their database congratulating them on their recent lottery win. Then they proceed to announce that in order to release funds they must part with a certain amount (as tax/fees) as per the rules or risk forfeiture. Some unsuspecting users might fall prey to this scandal and part with their money falling into their trap, where they continue to pay as they are misled by the scamsters who dupe their clients into believing that they are always one step closer to the money. The swindlers also might use telephone or printed letters to approach victims to execute their plan more professionally.

See also -

Combinadic

Factorial

Gambling

GTech Corporation

Luck

Probability

Probability theory

External links -

rotten.com - Rotten Library Article on Lottery Winners

lotterypost.com - Lottery Post Lottery Forums, Results, News, and Predictions

lotterybrief.com - Lottery Brief Latest Lottery News, Results, Articles, Tools and Resources

virginialottery.info - Virginia Lottery Lottery Portal

howstuffworks.com - How Lotteries Work - Hosted on !HowStuffWorksCategory:Lotterie s !be:Лятарэяde:Lottoes:Lo teríaeo:Loteriofr:Loterieis:G etraunnl:Loterijja:宝くじfi :Lottosv:Lottozh:博彩

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