Lean to Play the UK Lottery
December 21st, 2009
Being new to the UK Lottery is no excuse for not playing. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the games and lottery terminology, and you’ll soon be on your way to playing.
To begin, there are a number of instant win games to be played online, such as EuroMillions, Dream Number, and Lotto.
You can play up to four lines on a single play slip or up to five slips with multiple tickets. You can play the same numbers for as many as four weeks. All you have to do is match three numbers in the correct combination to win from one of the 12 prize levels. If you match the five main numbers and the two Lucky Star numbers you win (or share) the jackpot!EuroMillions consistently offers huge jackpots thanks to the participation of nine European countries. Jackpots usually start at 9 million and grow as the jackpot goes unclaimed. You play by selecting five main numbers, 1-50, and 2 Lucky Star numbers, 1-9.
Generally tickets for the EuroMillions are sold everyday until 11 p.m but for the fridays when tickets are sold till 7 p.m. You can watch the results on BBC One at 11:35 p.m on fridays or the results are readily available online from 10 p.m onwards.
Lotto works similarly. You can enter your own numbers, 1-49, or, if you’re playing online, you can choose “Lucky Dip” for a random number selection. Play as many as seven lines of numbers on one play slip or up to 35 lines on multiple tickets. You can select which draws and the number of weeks you wish to play. You can play as many as eight weeks starting with the next draw date. Winnings are based on the number of matches on your card.
Dream Number can be played on either your lotto slip or by itself. The Dream Number is a 7-digit number enabling you to have an oppurtunity to win up to 500,000 pounds. Many games are Instant Win such as those based on Scrabble, Monopoly or ones introduced for nearing holidays and events. The prizes go from 8,000 to 100,000 and up. Playing is easy and the winnings are, of course, Instant!
By learning some of the terms you can get even more comfortable with playing the lottery. Here are a few you should know. A bearer instrument is any item, paper lottery tickets included, that gives the person possessing it the right of ownership. The person who has it in their possession, regardless of who bought the ticket, has claim to any prize won.
Bonus Ball – An additional number selected after the primary numbers are drawn, as in the UK Lotto game. It has no bearing on the winning jackpot number, but can earn a better prize for the runner-up.
RNG – The software that generates the numbers in a random pattern is called RNG, Random Number Generator. Rollover is the term used to describe what happens to a jackpot fund when no player wins it. The jackpot amount is generally be counted for the next draw.
Tom Martens is the content coordinator at UKlotterytickets.co.za. South Arica’s primary portal to the UK Lottery.