The internet is a wonderful thing. You may now do all sorts of things from the comfort of your own home when you used to have to go to a store or put something in the post.

I now rent my DVDs online and they arrive over the post and I get my weekly groceries delivered to my door having ordered them from my number of favorites online.

The net makes things convenient. So when I forgot to buy my lottery ticket again and missed out on a small prize, I turned to the net for help. I was surprised at what I found!

There was as I expected the ability to purchase lottery tickets online from the UK’s National Lottery website. Great! No longer did I have to fiddle around with cash or get soaked in the rain going to the shop.

In fact they take good care of everything – take the cash through your banking account for the subscriptions automatically in order that you never miss a draw, check your numbers for you without fail and pay you any winnings!

Paying you your winnings probably will not sound like a big deal – but considering that the UK National Lottery began in 1994, unclaimed prizes have accumulated to more than Ł650 million [$1.17 billion]!

Checking that your numbers have won is probably the most useful service of all – because in the event that you don’t claim it you don’t get it!

A great service – convenient, easy and also fun.

Then a few months ago I found the next step on – an online lottery syndicate system!

Sure – the official national lottery website offers a syndicate management tool – although not like this one.

I looked at it rather sceptically as anyone by having an economics degree might! But I went through the numbers to check anyway. I was impressed.

They operate syndicates with 49 members in each. Then they do something clever – they fix among the six numbers to ensure that each of the 49 numbers is covered and then with 5 other randomly generated numbers they generate 44 separate lines.

This is clever – it implies that you’ll find 44 entries and effectively the syndicate only must match 5 of the 6 lottery draw numbers to win the jackpot – because the sixth ball shall always match.

But it is cleverer than that because the syndicate also wins more than the jackpot – another of the 44 lines will win 5 plus the bonus ball and then of-course another 42 lines also win by matching 5 numbers! Add all those multiple wins together and divide by the number in the syndicate and you win more than you would have done if you played solo!

In fact your odds of winning increases by 702% within the UK National Lottery Lotto draw!

And they have done the same trick with the EuroMillions draw. In case you are not familiar with this it’s as big as many of the multi-state lotteries in the USA. Why? Because 9 countries in Europe are playing it! And more want to join in!

It really is the largest tax-free lump-sum national lottery on this planet!
If you were watching the news earlier in 2006 you may have seen which it rose to an amazing Ł125m rollover (yes – that is in GBP not dollars or euros!)

Being a part on this lottery syndicate increases your prospects of winning by an incredible 3600%! Increasing the odds of winning any prize to 1 in 10 and it means you may win a prize by matching just one ball!

So next time you are waiting in line to buy your lottery ticket, running the risk of losing it, or forgetting to check whether you have won, think of how the web will make it simpler for you.