Had a thought.
Does anyone here play the lottery?

Is anyone a part of a syndicate?

Would anyone be interested in running our own syndicate?
We could setup to take payments via say Paypal or Nochex.
We each pay in (when we want to play) £1 plus website sucharge (i.e. £1.20 or summat). This way who ever is in charge of the syndicate isn't out of pocket.

We play Random (lucky Dip) numbers each saturday (cos lets face it, the Wednesday draws aint as worth it). Or maybe even just do it on the Friday Euro Draw.

www.national-lottery.co.uk have generic contracts so who ever is in charge cannot run away with the £££.

I'm up for it. We could be the first Internet Forum based syndicate to share a Jackpot.

Anything under 5 numbers (4 or less) just gets added back into the pot for that particular week to have more Lucky Dip goes.

Whoever is in charge can just write the numbers in each week. We could even setup a dedicate site to run it on.

Anyone else interested? Or shall I just shut up?

Interesting idea certainly - tho i am not sure how it would run - i.e smoothly.

I am in charge of the family syndicate which doesn't seem to win anything other than the odd tenner which is annoying as there are ten lines :mad:

Moon

Nice idea but I'm not sure if it will work.

I couldn't find this contract on the site you pointed out.

But I can't see how any contract can prevent the following scenario.

What happens if say the person who is running it got all 6 numbers up and said I forgot it put the money on this week and runs off with it.

Or, if all 6 did come up and s/he really did forget to put the numbers down.

Well how can you tell what numbers came out, if someone forgot to put it on then the money would go on the the next weeks. Remember they will be Lucky Dip numbers only, no set numbers at all.

Second if someone said they forgot, then some how WON then there is talk in the contract of investigation into whether or not the ticket was personal or team.

If for example I was running the syndicate, I'd get the tickets (lucky dips) and scan them in (low res) and upload them for all to see the numbers. The tickets would display the exact date and bar code etc. However I'd post em in black and white and low res so they couldn't be copied.

There are ways and means to do it.
I reckon (ecuse the pun) it's a winner!

I'll look for that contract thing. I am a member of said site (play online). It may be one of the options contained. However due to office firewall I cannot log onto the site here. Will have to wait to I get home!

If it goes well. And say we won a few 4 numbers. We could put the extra to developing a dedicated site to tale the cash and place the bets.

There is a program you can download for running a syndicate. In it you can specify who has what numbers and how often.
What will happen if you win ten pounds - does it go into the pot or do you share it out and all sorts of other options.

This contract can then be printed off and signed and witnessed.

Moon

I'm a little concerned...is this going to compete with Sam Miguel's bath plug syndicate? I'm not sure I want the chance of broken kneecaps.

;)

Like I said earlier. With the smaller amount won we could agree that either we use to money to fund the building of a dedicated site for the Sheffield Forum syndicate massive ;) or just put it in the pot to build up and share it at a later date, or just go back into the lottery for more chances to win.

Lots of options available and yes the contract can be printed off. We could also have an electronic one made when the site was built that meant that all people can have access to the actual tangible tickets purchased upon request.

At the end of the day the contract is there so that who ever is the organiser of the syndicate, doesn’t run off with the cash. So basically if it was me, it’s a promise that I wouldn’t run off with your winnings.

We had a lottery syndicate at work. Never won more than the odd tenner (which was put back in) and it eventually folded because no one could be ar*ed checking the numbers.
We then started a Premium Bond syndicate which has over £7000 in after 3 years. We've won about £400 (8 x £50 wins) in that time, plus we still have the £6,600 stake because you don't lose your money in PB. Also, they let you know when you've won so there's no input apart from buying them (which you can easily do over the phone). Beats the lottery into a cocked hat.

Col S

I don't have any idea what a Premium Bond could be other than a government bond program? If so you have made between 5-6% over three years...hardly spectacular or worth bragging about.

Premium bonds are like the lottery except you don't lose your money. Top prize is £1 million per month with thousands of prizes between £50 and £100,000. Not as much prize money as the lottery but the BIG difference is that you keep your stake money. Put £1000 in the lottery per year and chances are you'll lose £1000. Put £1000 in PB and you'll still have your £1000 at the end.
http://money.msn.co.uk/Bank_Plan/savings/PremiumBonds/Info/WhatArePremiumBonds/default.asp

From Cols Premium Bond Site

How does it work?

You can think of Premium Bonds like raffle tickets, except the prizes are bigger and you don’t lose your money if you don’t win. £1 buys you a Bond with a unique number that goes into a computer database known as ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment).

Every month ERNIE draws out a £1million jackpot winner and various other prize winners, depending on the size of the prize fund. So every month you could win anything from £50 to £1million. There is a minimum initial investment of £100, after which you can buy more Bonds in £10 multiples up to a limit of £30,000. All the money invested in Premium Bonds is tax free.

-------------------

See the bold section. Big difference with what you have to shell out too!

Interesting Cols...I wonder if this is legal in North America too as I have never heard of such a program.

Anyways, depends on what you're trying to do..the odds of hitting the jackpot in Premium Bonds is 1 in ~19 Billion for each £1 you put in, whereas the National Lottery is somewhere between 1 in 10-15 million.

Anyways, depends on what you're trying to do..the odds of hitting the jackpot in Premium Bonds is 1 in ~19 Billion for each £1 you put in, whereas the National Lottery is somewhere between 1 in 10-15 million.

Yeah - pretty unlikely whichever you buy :)

I won £50 once from PB's ... and I only had a fiver's worth !!

Is is not possible to play the national lotter online or have a 'standing order' set of numbers !?

Originally posted by Jamie
I won £50 once from PB's ... and I only had a fiver's worth !!

Is is not possible to play the national lotter online or have a 'standing order' set of numbers !?

Yes, here: National Lottery on-line (http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/gaming/showGames.do?type=games)

This has just brought back to me an idea that my brother had recently, during the Grand National weekend.

You could take everyone's money and not put it on, on the off chance that you won't win anything. Even if you only win a tenner (which is still fairly unlikely, even with a £20 steak) you could pay up the tenner yourself and still be £10 up on the deal.

A much better idea IMO, is for 49 people to put a quid in and pick a number between 1 and 49. If the number comes out as the bonus ball you get all the money. This means that you have better odds than the lottery, and you could win up to £49.

Or even better, the person who has the bonus ball gets £29, the person with 1 higher than the bonus ball gets £10 and the person with 1 lower gets £10. (For 49, 1 higher would be 1 and vice-versa).

Obviously this bypasses all the good causes etc. which the lottery is good for, and to be honest I'm not even certain if this would be considered legal.

Originally posted by Sidla

Obviously this bypasses all the good causes etc. which the lottery is good for, and to be honest I'm not even certain if this would be considered legal.

Some PAs and local charities do this, called 200 Clubs - there are 200 members, who each put £1 a week in (paid quarterly). They pick a random winner each week, plus 2nd and 3rd, who win, say £100, £25, £10 - and £65 raised for the charity. Obviously you can do it with any number of people or prize amounts.

I don't know what the legailities are.

DaB - Interesting you suggested this - I suggested it on another forum a while ago (when they 1st started selling lotto tickets online) where it had a good response - I just get round to setting it up!!! The National Lottery Syndicate software takes care of which numbers picked, who's paid, etc - I think it even connects with their website to get the winning numbers, and tell you how much you have won each week. PM me if you want to talk about the web side of it...

Nick,

If people are interested and you know how to do the work, I think it's a winner.
I'd be up for it. So long as it's run fairly we could all win.

PM me some details of web development and we could look into starting it up.

Also if people are genuinly interested (I am) post on this thread and we'll see what we can come up with!

If you guys get a site together I can hook you up with hosting for free.

I've never really been into buying lotto tickets so I don't think I'll start now, but I don't mind helping you out in your endeavour...as long as you buy me a round when you win the jackpot ;)

Edit: That free offer is supposing you're not using much bandwidth...can't see that you would need much. If you start sucking my bandwidth you'll have to buy me a lotto ticket a month :D

Cheers.
Will bear that in mind.

PS your PM box is full!!!

Whoops...deleted some messages now :blush:

Yup just let me know if you need some hosting.

hosting no problem, thanks anyway!!

I have just set up a syndicate for the Ambassadors and I was thinking what a forum syndicate would take to set up, 17 Ambassadors win a £17m jackpot I would love to see the faces of the management then:nod: :twisted: :clap:
Count me in if it get's goin