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Buying an Irish lottery ticket for the weekend draw? Hold on a minute.
Here’s why you should not buy an Irish lottery ticket until the weekend. This month changes take effect in Ireland’s national lottery game – they are adding two numbers, so we now pick from 47 numbers. The odds of each row winning will now be just under one in eleven million. Expect more rollover draws, bigger wins and fewer winners. And if you buy a Saturday ticket on the previous Sunday, you have a bigger chance of being murdered before the draw than you have of winning the big prize.
Bear with me. There were 52 murders in Ireland last year. Therefore, the overall odds of being murdered in any given week is one in 4.5 million (one person per week, out of each of Ireland’s circa 4.5M population). There were 196 road deaths last year, giving you average weekly odds of being killed on the roads of one in 1.2 million. Let’s not talk about how many die of heart disease…
Let’s say you buy a 2-line ticket on a Sunday for the following weekend lottery draw. You have a higher chance of being murdered (all things being equal) by the weekend than you have of your numbers coming up for the big prize on Saturday. Furthermore, you have a much higher chance of dying on Ireland’s roads than of winning.
And worse, if you win the lottery, someone else may have the same numbers, meaning you have to share the prize money, reducing the benefit. If you die next week, however, it doesn’t matter how many others share your fate – there is no upside to dying in company.
Here’s the good news: your chance of being murdered or dying on the roads before the draw falls steadily as you get closer to Saturday – but your odds of winning Saturday’s lottery stay the same, at eleven million to one.
So keep your Saturday lotto draw money in your pocket, at least till the weekend!
p.s. your chance of winning the big Euromillions prize is one in 116,531,800 – so buy that ticket as close to the draw as you can. Good luck!
