How do you take part in lottery group games?

Almost everyone has a lucky number. This could be the date of birth of your child, or just a number that somehow keeps on making its way back in your life. These kind of numbers help you to fill out the lottery ticket with great confidence. Yet odds are pretty small that you actually get to collect a significant cash amount with one, two, or perhaps three lottery tickets. Luckily, there is another smart way of improving your odds: the group games. For this, you do not have to actually start looking for a number of colleagues or friends who want to play with you. TheLotter already offers this possibility for each player.

More lottery tickets, better odds

In the gambling world, one often speaks of ‘spreading your chances’. Even for lotteries, this phenomenon applies. Because how good exactly are your odds of correctly predicting five regular numbers and that one Mega Ball in the Mega Millions lottery? The answer is fairly simple: small, very small in fact. You have, to be exact, a chance of 258 million to 1 to win the jackpot in Mega Millions.

In a group game, you join forces with other lottery enthusiasts. You all pool some money together and use this money to collectively buy lottery tickets. Once you get together a sizeable group, it might just happen that you take part with more than a hundred different number combinations. You do not have to know the exact odds to understand that your odds of winning are now sharply increasing. Once the time of the draw comes nearer, you also know that players from all over the world will be anxiously awaiting this moment, their lottery ticket in hand. Once one of your lottery tickets contains the right number combination, all of you will be winners!

This is how you take part in a group game

TheLotter has a separate section with group games. Here, you will find all lotteries for which there are still places available in a group. As such, you are not supposed to create a group of your own. TheLotter takes care of this and you simply sign up for it.

Normally, you can decide on the numbers that you want to play with yourself. For the group game, this is somewhat different. The numbers are randomly selected by TheLotter and there is very little that you can do about this. The advantage is that you can see in advance which numbers are on the lottery tickets. After that, it is up to you to decide whether you would like to take part or if you prefer trying your luck in another lottery.

What kind of group games are there?

For each lottery, there are often multiple group games to choose from. The difference is in the way that the numbers are selected. As such, you still have some influence on the game. The group games that you can choose between are:

• Random selection: it is already in the name. From a fixed number of rows, some (random) numbers are selected – completely randomly. All numbers that are in the grid are included. This way, there could be hundreds of different combinations.
• Systematic: before the lottery ticket is filled out, there are already some numbers written down. There are always somewhere between six and fourteen. Using these selected numbers, theLotter will then come up with various different combinations. The regular numbers 13 14 15 36 37 40 48 70 and 75 could, for instance, result in the number sequence 13 40 48 70 75 and Mega Ball 15. Yet the sequence 36 37 40 48 70 and Mega Ball 15 would also be possible. Therefore, there is definitely a well-thought out system behind this group game.
• Minimum one number correct: a lottery form contains a large amount of numbers. Often, you only have to choose five or six of those. Therefore, it really makes a difference if you know for certain that at least one number will be correct. Any number in the grid will, in this version of the game, always end up on the lottery tickets of the group at least once. This is already a good start.
• Extra number correct: some lotteries operate using regular numbers and extra numbers. The Mega Ball, Powerball and the stars of EuroMillions are examples of those extra numbers. For this final version of a group game, all possible combinations of the extra numbers will end up on your lottery tickets. This way, you will always know for certain that these numbers are correct.

Receive a percentage of the prize money for each share

With a group game, you pool together with a group to purchase a number of lottery tickets. It is therefore only logical that the profits will eventually be divided by the group. The profit is shared, but the odds of winning are quite a bit higher. Because of this, theLotter always works using a fixed system, so that a group game is played fairly and squarely.

Before a group game goes online, it is already split up in so-called shares. Each of these shares has an equal value. A group game for the Californian Super Lotto Plus, for instance, could consist of 50 different shares. The more popular the lottery, the more shares there usually are. As player, you can purchase such a share. Each share represents a certain percentage of the prize money. For the Super Lotto Plus, however, you will receive 2% of the total profit per share. This might not sound like a lot. But you are obviously allowed to purchase multiple shares for a group game. As such, the prize money could eventually still start to add up.