State-promoted gambling is a grim idea at the best of times. But the UK national lottery is scraping the barrel of dishonest promotion.
They’ve just announced some changes. Take a look at that page and see if you can work out what’s going on.
The important bit is in the smaller print, under “Other Changes”:
More numbers to choose from
You will now be able to choose 6 numbers from a total of 59 rather than 49.
Yep, that’s their way of saying “
we’ve just dramatically reduced your chances of picking the winning numbers
“. Each ticket now has a 1 in 45 million chance at the jackpot, rather than the oh-so-reasonable 1 in 14 million chance beforehand.
They’ve tried to muddy the waters by adding a free ticket prize tier, so they can offer “
a better chance of winning a prize
“.
All in all, it just makes lotto look like an even more underhanded way to con people out of their money.