Would you like to win the UK National Lottery Jackpot?

Since the inception of the UK National lottery, all drawn combinations have been unique so far. In fact, if you look at the lotteries around the world, you'd find that there is only one lottery (to our knowledge anyway) - the Bulgarian lottery - that had the same combination drawn twice, and amazingly it happened in two consecutive draws! The numbers 4;15;23;24;35;42 were selected, albeit in a different order, live on television on the 6th and 9th of September 2009. A Bulgarian lottery spokesman said: “This has happened for the first time in the 52-year history of the lottery. We are absolutely stunned to see such a freak coincidence”.

Is it mathematically probable?

As any mathematician will tell you any combination has the same chance of being drawn, even the already drawn ones. But if a repeated lottery combination is such a “freak” and rare coincidence, should we really play it? And even if we decide against playing it, wouldn't be a hideous process to go through all 1000+ combinations drawn in the past so that to ensure we pick a never-drawn-before combination?

Albeit it was our least favourite number out of the five mentioned in the previous lottery analysis post , number 24 did indeed come up. Skip 6 was truly due. Well done to syndicate Zubra for managing to trap 3 winning numbers. Shall we do better next time? Positive thinking please!

Currently there are 5 numbers with skip 6 (e.g. they all appeared 6 draws ago) as follows: 25;43;34;41;24. You can see current skips of all lottery numbers here: Skips

Catchalotto is dropping its charge per play by 33 pence, meaning you can now join a syndicate for £1, the same price as buying your ticket via an official lottery retailer.

There is however £1 charge each time you load money to your Catchalotto account. This is to cover administrative and banking costs - costs which we cannot avoid. The maximum amount of games you can load is 20. Please note that there are no time restrictions to play these games, they can be played at any time in any syndicate.

If you play EuroMillions lottery you now get an extra chance of becoming a millionaire. A new addition called The Millionaire Raffle is now in place since the 13th November 2009. The Millionaire raffle is basically a randomly generated number (like Dream number) printed on your Euromillions ticket , that is 9 digits long and made up of 3 letters and 6 numbers, e.g. ABC123456. It is only applicable to the UK so if you purchase your Euromillions ticket abroad, your ticket will not be entered into the Millionaire Raffle draw.

Yes, they were all drawn sometime in the past. But this is not the common factor that we're after.

Ok, so the clue is in the picture. From Lottorino point of view, these combinations stand out from other drawn lotto combinations in that they all have the biggest out-of-sync standard deviations. If you look closely, you will see that the first two combinations have numbers too close to each other, or put differently the deviation or spread of its numbers from average is very small. 1;4;7;44;47;48 combination has a big gap in the middle boosting its standard deviation high. These are the only combinations in the entire UK National Lottery history that scored a 3‰ Lottorino exclusively on the basis of their abnormal standard deviations. There were other combinations in the past that got downgraded because of their not-so-standard deviations, but the above 3 are the most extreme cases so far.

It's a double Lotto rollover tonight with an estimated £11m jackpot. All the best to Skat syndicate. If you'd like to join this syndicate, you can do so until 17:00, hurry! Join here.

Good luck!

Friday's combination 11, 19, 34, 43 and 45; lucky star numbers 5 and 9 proved to be a lucky one to 2 British tickets holders. The jackpot, that has rolled-over 5 times, stood at a massive £91m meaning each ticket has scooped an incredible £45.5m!

One of the tickets belongs to Les Scadding, 58, and his wife Samantha Peachey-Scadding, 38, from Caerleon, South Wales (pictured). It is now the largest-ever single lottery win in the UK history - the couple are picking up their £45,570,835.50 cheque for half the jackpot and could now be placed in the same league as Sir Cliff Richard, DJ Chris Evans, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and top model Kate Moss, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. The second ticket is held by a lottery syndicate of Liverpool IT workers called the "Magnificent Seven", banking £6.5m each.

Euromillions jackpot stands at a cool £90m, will there be a winner tonight? There were no jackpot winners on Wednesday's Lotto draw, so it's also a Lotto rollover tomorrow with an estimated £7m jackpot. All the best everyone, keeping fingers crossed for Albali syndicate. If you'd like to join this syndicate, you can do so until 17:00 tommorrow. Join here.

We theoretically played 22 combinations by using 12-number lottery wheel for Wednesday 4th of November lottery draw. Out of 12 numbers selected, we got 2 winnings numbers right, so as you know, no prizes there! 9 combinations had both numbers in, so if we trapped a third winning number, there probably would have been some winnings.

Let's look at statistical odds now so that we can have some point of reference to how badly or well we did with our wheeling.

The lottery odds for this particular wheel are as follows:

Those of you who are new to the concept of lottery wheeling, please refer to Golden Rules - Rule 5 for a brief explanation. Here, let's get practical, let's do some wheeling for this coming Wednesday, 4th of November lottery draw. Please note that unless these combinations are played in Situla lottery syndicate, these are all theoretical plays. The purpose of it all is to explain how lottery wheeling works.

There is an overwhelming number of lottery wheels available, here we are going to use a 12-number wheel that generates 22 combinations and guarantees 4 out of 5 win. This means that if we manage to trap 5 winning lottery numbers in the selected 12 numbers, we should expect to get at least one 4-number prize. So why not use a wheel that guarantees the main prize, we hear you ask?

When you purchase your lottery ticket either via an official National lottery retailer or online, you have an option to select your numbers via Lucky Dip facility, which randomly generates a combination for you.

Similarly, when you join Catchalotto syndicate, you have an option to enter your own combination or ask Lottorino to pick a combination for you via Quick Pick function. Here's what Lottorino does before it gives you your lucky combination:

1. It will check that your combination has not already been played within your syndicate - remember, no more duplications- more unique combinations are played, better the odds become!

2. It will scan syndicate's combinations and work out which numbers have not yet been entered, and will try to use some of those numbers in a combination given to you. That way, a syndicate is able to cover more lotto numbers.

It was lotto rollover yesterday, but with a drawn combination in high numbers 24;25;34;38;41;43 no jackpot was won, meaning it's a double rollover now. We had a similar high-numbered combination on the 7th October 26;27;28;43;45;46 which scored 5% Lottorino, comparing to 78% Lottorino yesterday. This is because 24 as a first number is regarded as slightly better and yesterday's combination also had a better spread in numbers.

It's a double lottery rollover with an estimated jackpot of £12,000,000. Good luck to Draconis syndicate! If you'd like to join this syndicate, you can do so until 17:00 Sat. Maximum number of places is 30! Join here.

It's a lotto rollover tomorrow, with an estimated jackpot of £7,000,000. All the best everyone, keep fingers crossed for Altair syndicate, keep thinking positively! If you'd like to join this syndicate, you can do so until 17:00 tommorrow. Join here.

There are 13,983,816 lottery combinations that can be made from numbers 1 to 49. If we were to say, that the first combination is 1;2;3;4;5;6, the second one 1;2;3;4;5;7, the third one 1;2;3;4;5;8, and so on, until combination number 13,983,816 is 44;45;46;47;48;49, we would find that the above lotto combination - 6;7;16;20;28;47 - sits right down the middle, i.e. a combination situated in 6,991,908 place.

In probability theory and statistics terms, this combination can be called a median - a number separating the higher half of a distribution, from the lower half. Well, to be statistically correct, a lottery combination 6;7;16;20;28;48 is also a median.