It Could Be You...after 75,999,999 others
...we need a dream.The odds of winning the EuroMillions lottery are 76 million to one. So why are so many buying tickets?
...are we just taking a chance or being taken for a ride? According to bookmakers William Hill, the odds on winning the jackpot are 76 million to one.
To put this in perspective, spokesman Graham Sharpe says this week the bookmaker has given similar odds to two other gambles - one for the world to end, and the other for Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother to become the next England football manager.
As likely as that? But when we've virtually no chance of winning, why are so many of us queuing up to hand over £1.50 for a ticket?
Professor Alastair Ross, a psychologist who specialises in interpreting gambling and risk, says we find it almost impossible to understand such a huge level of improbability.
French lottery
Europe in the grip of lottery fever
"People can't conceive how unlikely it is," says Dr Ross
...he says that a weekly player of the national lottery could only expect to win a jackpot if they lived to be 300,000 years old.
Being dealt a Royal Flush poker hand - 1 in 650,000
Being killed today in a road accident in the UK - 1 in 6 million
Winning the EuroMillions jackpot - 1 in 76 million
Source: John Haigh, University of Sussex
We can still dream...it could be you.
BBC
posted by Hurler @ 8:50 pm
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