Lucky Dips
To win a Lotto jackpot, you must match six main balls. Would a computer-generated Lucky Dip be more random than your personal choice?
Lotto is a modern example of a lottery. In general terms, a lottery is a game of chance, not skill, in which buyers of tickets receive prizes chosen by lot, according to a set of predetermined rules. Lotteries are not new; the underlying ideas have existed since the 15th century.
Prizes are tiered in value, ranging from a high value jackpot down to small consolation prizes.
Matching your choice with the numbers drawn lies at the heart of the game. To win the Lotto jackpot, you must match six main balls. How do you choose your numbers to play?
Table of contents
Estimated reading time: 17 minutes
Choosing numbers to play
Predicting which set of six numbers will appear for a particular draw is a nearly impossible feat. Yet, records show that many people have done this since the National Lottery began in November 1994.
Lest you become too optimistic, you should realise that millions of players have bought tens of billions of tickets in the meantime, but only several thousand became millionaires.
Realising there is no future in forecasting lottery draws, how might we proceed?
Realistically, guessing is the best we can do. Therefore, one solution that seems reasonable and logical to most people is to pick six numbers randomly in the hope that they match the results of the actual draw.
But there is a problem. Evidence suggests that many players apply their prejudices to select numbers, often subconsciously, resulting in far from random choices.
Even the design of the early play slips made it easy to pick numbers arranged vertically (or diagonally) on a board, especially when making a hurried entry. e.g. 3, 8, 33, 38, 43 and 48. You can see how easy it was!
The option of Lucky Dips
Several months after the National Lottery began, Camelot allowed players to request the computer terminal to generate sets of six random numbers automatically without repetition – either by marking a box on the newly modified play slip or by asking the retailer directly.
(Used until Wednesday draws began on 1 February 1997).
Camelot coined the term Lucky Dip to describe this process. Later, all National Lottery games would have this provision. e.g. Thunderball.
Lucky Dips simplified play. They were a good idea since they offered a quick and easy solution for players who needed help with playing and for those who might otherwise agonise over which numbers to choose.
Altruism was not the only reason for their introduction; Lucky Dips did much more, as we shall discover shortly. e.g. They deflected criticism aimed at Camelot.
The start of the National Lottery
It is difficult for Governments to find and spend money raised by general taxation on life-enhancing and uplifting projects, such as the Arts. Deemed non-essential, they needed more clout to get funding since there are always more pressing needs for the public purse.
The British Government, led then by Prime Minister John Major, proposed to revive a national lottery, unseen in Britain since 1826.
Read: Early lotteries in England – a national love affair for more information.
Historically, lotteries have been proven to generate vast sums of money. However, earlier frauds and scandals made them unpalatable to many influential parts of society, including Churches, MPs and social welfare reformers.
After much argument and debate, Parliament passed the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. The lottery would support a few Good Causes[1] and begin towards the end of 1994. Its foundation rested on the principle of additionality[2].
There was considerable excitement as the launch date approached. Would the new National Lottery be successful? Would anyone become a millionaire instantly? More importantly, would you? Such was the dream instilled in people’s minds.
The National Lottery circulated a promotional leaflet entitled “Who’ll Be Our First Ever Jackpot Winner? – It Could Be You” as a mail-shot to millions of homes in the UK before the first draw. The leaflets accompanied advertisements on independent television channels, magazines, and hoardings.
This leaflet (© Camelot Group Plc. The National Lottery, PO Box 287, Watford WD1 8TT) forms part of my collection of lottery memorabilia.
It speculated that the jackpot prize might be as high as £2 million, implying that it might be comparable to the largest jackpot of £2,072,220 paid by the football pools, which Rodi Woodcock of South London won in 1991, and thus steal the thunder of the famous football pools[3].
The results of the first Draw
The National Lottery began on Saturday, 19 November 1994, with a single game played each Saturday, drawing seven balls from a drum containing forty-nine. There were six main balls and one bonus ball. Later, this game would be called Lotto after rebranding in 2002. The cost was £1 to play one board per draw.
There were five prize tiers, ranging from a guaranteed sum of £10 and rising to a jackpot of more than £1 million, divided where necessary should there be several winners. The top prize would carry over to the next draw as a rollover if no one won outright.
The numbers of the first draw were: 3, 5, 14, 22, 30 and 44 – with bonus 10.
The first draw produced no millionaires despite the media hype and the hopes and expectations of the public. Instead, seven winners shared the jackpot, each receiving £839,254. The disappointment was palpable in the one-hour show hosted by Noel Edmonds after the draw.
However, there was no need for concern or dismay since 1,152,611 winners collected prizes worth £22,004,123 from ticket sales of £48,965,792.
Afterwards, no one could doubt that the National Lottery had begun successfully, exceeding expectations triumphantly, and made a good start in raising colossal sums of money for charities – its raison d’etre. The first draw contributed about £14 million to the funds.
| Category of prize | Number of winners | Prize | Prize Pool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Match 6 (jackpot) | 7 | £839,254 | £5,874,778 |
| Match 5 plus bonus ball | 39 | £46,349 | £1,807,611 |
| Match 5 | 2,139 | £528 | £1,129,392 |
| Match 4 | 76,731 | £32 | £2,455,392 |
| Match 3 | 1,073,695 | £10 | £10,736,950 |
| Total: | 1,152,611 | £22,004,123 |
Ticket sales boomed
In the first few weeks, sales were sustained and exceeded all expectations with dramatic consequences for the jackpot. One lucky winner[4] scooped a prize of nearly £18 million on the fourth draw!
Fifty-three draws were held on Saturdays in the first year. Twenty winners collected more than £5 million, and two won more than £20 million.
No one had expected prizes of this magnitude, nor so frequently. Total sales for the online game amounted to just under £3.4 billion, generating £949 million for Good Causes and £407 million for the Exchequer – a truly remarkable performance!
Without a doubt, the National Lottery was viable. Ticket sales amounted to £63.9 million per week on average, which increased whenever there was a rollover.
291 tickets won jackpot prizes; 132 of them (45%) won at least £1 million, while 6 (2%) won at least £10 million.
Judged by these standards, the National Lottery was a spectacular success.
However, not everybody agreed. There were loud cries of dissent from some quarters. Many people were dismayed by such large prizes. Others believed the whole thing to be abhorrent, considering it immoral that a few people could become so wealthy by chance without working for it, contrary to the Protestant work ethic. There were calls to cap the jackpot and revise the prize structure.
Camelot resisted such pressure. After establishing the game successfully in the public’s mind, there was little appetite for change so early in the proceedings since it might jeopardise the income of the Good Causes – the raison d’être of the lottery.
The relationship between jackpots and sales
The bar chart below shows the sales value of National Lottery tickets between 19 November 1994 and 16 March 1996. It covers the first 70 draws when Lucky Dips were unavailable. They may have only been devised once the Lottery was underway and took time to implement, beginning after 16 March 1996.
Features of the bar chart
- Once established in the public’s gaze, you can see an underlying sales volume of about £64 million per draw on average.
- Large spikes show that sales increased noticeably for some draws.
- The jackpots of draws 9, 20, 24, 28, 30, 34, 40, 44, 59, 60, 62 and 63 were spikes. Looking at the accompanying data, they had been boosted by carrying over the previous jackpot, which no one had won, meaning they were rollover jackpots.
- Draws 60 and 63 were double rollovers. i.e. a rollover followed immediately by another.
- Draw 17 was a particular case. It was a Superdraw, meaning that Camelot had increased the jackpot by £4 million, unrelated to sales, to stimulate interest.
- Typically, sales fall back to their average level after someone wins the jackpot. However, the baseline level rose temporarily to about £75 million after draws 60 and 63, supporting the view that large sales chase bumper jackpots.
In conclusion, big jackpots increase ticket sales markedly; conversely, bumper sales increase jackpots.
The infographic below shows the patterns[5] on winning boards for the first seventy draws – before Lucky Dips were introduced.
First seventy draws – no Lucky Dips.
The infographic is an artist’s impression, showing how the six winning main numbers (shown in red) appear on the play slip displayed earlier; the bonus ball appears in cyan.
Spectacular jackpots
To illustrate, draw 60, held on Saturday, 6 January 1996, was a double rollover that culminated in a jackpot of £42 million, shared between three winners, each collecting £14 million.
Ticket sales for draws 58, 59 and 60 were: £67.9 million, £78.4 million and a staggering £127.8 million, respectively. Sales for the third (draw 60) were twice the weekly average for the first year of operation and set a record that has yet to be beaten.
Fortunately, there was a simple solution to the problem of huge jackpots that involved minimal change. i.e. Lucky Dips.
Instead of making your selections, Camelot’s computer terminal does the job for you – at random. You do not have to fill in a play slip; instead, ask the retailer for a Lucky Dip[6]. What could be simpler?
Lucky Dips appear
The introduction of Lucky Dips led to large but “more reasonable” jackpots and a higher proportion of millionaires. As a side effect, they made playing the Lottery more casual.
There were 56 draws between the start of Lucky Dips and the first Wednesday draw. They produced 188 jackpot winners, of which 168 (89%) won £1 million or more, and 7 (4%) won more than £10 million. Ticket sales averaged £70.6 million per draw.
Early concerns that the National Lottery might fuel problem gambling, particularly among vulnerable groups, such as underage players, low-income families and others with a gambling addiction, proved to be vastly overstated.
Impact of Lucky Dips
With a preponderance of big jackpots in the first year, Camelot had come under tremendous pressure.
Many critics of the National Lottery thought that this was unhealthy. Creating millionaires was one thing, but producing multi-millionaires by chance was another matter entirely and morally reprehensible. The critics called for tighter regulation[7], a cap on jackpots and a more equitable distribution of prizes among the lower tiers.
Beginning with draw 71, Lucky Dips appeased the critics, leaving the existing prize structure intact while making it easier to play. Players did not have to re-imagine the game. There was no disruption.
Lucky Dips caught on, accounting regularly for about 30% of tickets sold for each draw[8]. They introduced a degree of randomness in choosing sets of numbers that human beings rarely show. They spread the choices widely over the possible combinations of the six main numbers. Huge jackpots became less frequent, and there tended to be more winners of the higher prize tiers, giving a fairer impression.
Before Lucky Dips were introduced, fourteen won jackpots of £10 million, but only seven in the next 70 draws.
| Range of Draws | Winners | Number of Draws | Percentage of Draws |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 70 | 14 | 8 | 11% |
| 71 to 140 | 7 | 6 | 9% |
| 71 to 1855 | 49 | 44 | 2% |
There were 56 draws between the start of Lucky Dips on Saturday, 23 March 1996 (draw 71), and the first Wednesday draw on 5 February 1997 (draw 117). They produced 188 jackpot winners, of which 168 (89%) won £1 million or more, and 7 (4%) won more than £10 million. Ticket sales averaged £70.6 million per draw.
Camelot had defused some adverse criticism successfully without depressing sales or reducing the income for Good Causes[9]. There were more millionaires and an occasional bumper jackpot to spice things up!
Press release
Camelot issued a press release about Lucky Dips in May 2000. It covered the period between 17 March 1996 (draw 71) and 20 May 2000 (draw 460), when there were 43 Superdraws. The following table summarises what happened.
| Prize Category | Lucky Dip Winners | Lucky Dip Winners (%) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Match 5+ winners | 1,526 | 19% | 7,908 |
| Jackpot winners | 251 | 19% | 1,335 |
| All winners | 69,998,928 | 21% | 340,932,027 |
| Prizes | £1,894,180,776 | 23% | £ 8,371,386,150 |
| Sales | Not declared | – | £18,127,358,856 |
Later, Camelot published the number of winners of Lucky Dips for 646 draws individually on the National Lottery website between 15 May 2002 (draw 667) and 21 January 2009 (draw 1365) with some gaps, spanning 20 Superdraws.
I have produced a histogram showing the frequency of Lucky Dip winners by percentage[10] covering those draws.
| Minimum percentage: | 6.3% |
| Maximum percentage: | 59.6% |
| Standard deviation: | 6.2% |
| Mean percentage: | 33.0% ± 6.2% |
On average, Lucky Dips accounted for 33% of winning boards.
| Range | Frequency |
|---|---|
| 0% to < 5% | 0 |
| 5% to < 10% | 1 |
| 10% to < 20% | 0 |
| 20% to < 25% | 47 |
| 25% to < 30% | 174 |
| 30% to < 35% | 204 |
| 35% to < 40% | 131 |
| 40% to < 45% | 69 |
| 45% to < 50% | 16 |
| 50% to < 55% | 2 |
| 55% to < 60% | 2 |
| 60% to 100% | 0 |
| Total: | 646 |
Very high jackpots have occurred infrequently in Lotto since the introduction of Lucky Dips. High jackpots tend to correspond with rollovers, Superdraws or a combination of both.
Although they were commonplace in the early years of the National Lottery, Superdraws are now rare. Before the New Dawn[11], the gap between the last two Superdraws was more than five years.
The last Superdraw before the New Dawn for Lotto took place on 5 November 2011, near the seventeenth anniversary of the first-ever National Lottery draw. This draw (1656) had a jackpot pool of £10 million, which was shared among four winners. Only one of the main numbers was above 31, and the success rate was 1.86%.
Given the long break since this Superdraw, it was beginning to look like Camelot had shifted the focus from Lotto to Euromillions as far as high jackpots were concerned. Then, Camelot held two Superdraws of £10 million on consecutive Saturdays to promote the New Dawn for Lotto.
Are Lucky Dips random?
It is valid to question whether the numbers generated for Lucky Dips are random at the point of sale.
The National Lottery Commission[12] asked the Centre for the Study of Gambling at the University of Salford to undertake extensive statistical research. The brief was to determine whether there were elements of non-randomness in the Euromillions draws between February 2004 and 2008 among the participating countries.
Reporting in 2010, the investigators found no significant bias in the numbers produced for players using the pseudo-random number generators built into the lottery system software. They concluded confidently that the Lucky Dips were chosen randomly in practice over the study period[13].
Conclusion
Lucky Dips simplified play. No longer do hesitant players need to agonise over which numbers to choose to make their entries. Buying a Lucky Dip took away personal prejudices. Lucky Dip players could rely on a computer to make their choices. Players could not reject them if they were not to their liking; that wasn’t allowed.
Huge jackpots became less common, but Camelot offered another jackpot-only game for an additional cost as a remedy. The game was Lotto Extra. It ran from 15 November 2000 until 8 July 2006, when it fell out of favour. You could only buy a Lotto Extra ticket in conjunction with Lotto.
Notes
- [1] Originally, they were: Arts, Charities, Heritage, Millennium Projects and Sports.
- [2] Principle of Additionality: Money raised by the lottery should be in addition to that raised by general taxation. i.e. The lottery should not relieve the burden from the taxpayer, but provide extra funding.
- [3] For more details, see this article published by the Liverpool Echo newspaper – How the Football Pools made millionaires out of everyday people.
- [4] An article on the Daily Mail’s website, Mail Online, tells his salutary tale.
- [5] You can see that seven rectangular blocks are filled in each representative board. However, filling seven blocks thus would have caused the retailer’s lottery machine to reject the play slip – to the player’s dismay and those in the queue behind him (or her) in the shop. A player must fill in six; that is the rule. I have added the bonus number for brevity to show the layout.
- [6] Lucky Dip is a registered trademark in the UK of the National Lottery Commission (now Gambling Commission) in classes 16, 28 and 36 of the register.
- [7] At that time, OFLOT was the regulator of the National Lottery. After a scandal in the run-up to issuing a second licence to operate the National Lottery, the National Lottery Commission replaced OFLOT. That controversy was hardly surprising, given that the National Lottery was a big undertaking, flush with cash. e.g. large jackpots, causes of doubtful value “in the court of public opinion”, and seemingly “fat cat” salaries and large profits. Thankfully, these problems were resolved swiftly for the benefit of the National Lottery – for players and the institution alike.
- [8] According to an e-mail I received from the National Lottery helpline, responding to my enquiry.
- [9] Although Camelot operates the National Lottery, it is not responsible for distributing money to Good Causes; the responsibility lies with other bodies.
- [10] For example, there were 353,094 winners in draw 721 held on 20 November 2002 (the 15th draw in our list). According to Camelot, 116,618 winners had bought Lucky Dips; the result (33.0%) places this draw as one member of the 204 in the range of (30% to 35%).
- [11] Beginning with draw 1856 on 5 October 2013, the New Dawn introduced a new prize structure for Lotto with additional raffle prizes of £20,000; Camelot dropped them later.
- [12] Then, the National Lottery Commission regulated the UK National Lottery; the Gambling Commission took over the role in 2013.
- [13] Read: Randomness of Euromillions Draws for more information.
Revision date: 5 March 2023