Online Lotto

Lotteries have been around for thousands of years. Keno – essentially a form of the lottery – was played in China at least 1,800 years ago, and drawings were known to be held in the Roman Empire, with at least one series of contests being utilized to pay for repairs to the city of Rome during the reign of Augustus Caesar.

Lotteries continued to go in and out of fashion through the centuries. In the United States, they were actually quite common during and after the Revolutionary War, and continued to be so through much of the 1800s. However, laws against all gambling would be passed in America during this period, and many other countries had similarly little tolerance for gaming, so the practice diminished considerably heading into the 20th century.

Modern lotto drawings began to reappear in the middle of the last century. Many municipalities, states, and countries found that they could offer this very limited form of betting in order to raise funds for municipal projects. In the United States, for instance, the first state to offer a modern lottery was New Hampshire in 1964 (though the territory of Puerto Rico had done so 30 years earlier). Seeing their success, many other states followed, and today, more than 40 states offer some form of drawings. Most of these lottery programs were initially founded with the intention of funding educational projects; in many cases, however, some or all of the money has been diverted to the general funds of these states or to other causes.

In an effort to attract even more players, many states took the step of combining their efforts in order to offer bigger and more attractive prizes. Two of these efforts were particularly successful and now span nearly the entire country: Powerball and Mega Millions. In fact, Powerball set the record for the largest lotto jackpot in history in early 2016, when three winners split a jackpot of approximately $1.6 billion.

Of course, lotteries don’t just exist in in the United States. In fact, the lotto is one of the most popular forms of gaming in the world, with even many nations that otherwise authorize casinos or sports betting allowing the state to run charitable drawings with large prizes. Some of the most notable worldwide lotto games include Australia’s OZ Lotto, China’s Welfare Lottery (as well as the China Sports Lottery), the EuroMillions jackpot that is offered in many European nations (including the UK, France, Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland), Mega-Sena in Brazil, and Italy’s SuperEnalotto.

The Internet hasn’t just made it easier to buy tickets through standard channels. It has also afforded players the chance to take advantage of some unique opportunities that may not have existed for them in previous eras.

One example is the ability to have other people buy tickets for you in lotteries you might not otherwise have the opportunity to play. You may have heard about this phenomenon in the news: there was a famous incident in which a person in Iraq won $6.4 million in a lottery run by the state of Oregon, a result that raised plenty of eyebrows in the United States.

But these arrangements have been available to interested parties for many years now. There are multiple sites that will purchase tickets on your behalf for a small premium, allowing you to potentially win prizes from just about anywhere in the world.

The process is simple. First, like “official” lotto sites, you’ll be asked to pick the game you want to play. The main difference is that you may be able to pick from big jackpots across the globe, rather than just games in a single jurisdiction. You’ll pick your numbers, decide how many tickets you want to play, and submit your entries, just as on any other website. You may even be able to make a subscription, which again is likely to come with a discount if you’re willing to pay for several drawings at once.

The differences come into play after you complete your purchase. Instead of getting an immediate confirmation of your entries, an actual human being – a concierge – will have to physically purchase your tickets on your behalf. Once they’ve done so, they’ll scan the tickets, and post them to your online account so that you can confirm that you’re entered into the drawing.

Should you win a small prize, a concierge for the site will redeem your winners and place your earnings back into your account, allowing you to make more purchases or withdraw your funds. For bigger wins (including jackpots), the site will either send you the tickets so that you can redeem the prize, or they may be able to claim the prizes on your behalf, with the exact procedures depending a lot on the rules of a given lotto organization.

Another possibility that has expanded thanks to the Internet is the concept of the syndicate. That term refers to any group that pools their money in order to increase their chances to win a jackpot or other large prize, agreeing to split their winnings should any of their tickets hit the lucky numbers.

These groups are nothing new. Many jackpots have been won by office pools that contain dozens of players, each of whom still received a fairly sizable payout when they collected their prizes, much to the chagrin of any of their co-workers who didn’t take part in the group.

But the Internet has made it easier than ever to find people with whom you can share in your dreams of changing your life forever. Some sites now set up syndicates on behalf of their members for specific lotteries, allowing a certain number of people to sign up for a given price, after which they’ll purchase the appropriate number of tickets. In many cases, operators will also provide tools to help people set up their own syndicates among friends.

While this may seem like a lot of work for very little benefit – it’s not that hard to find people to split the cost of tickets with you, and collecting money and divvying up winnings isn’t all that hard – there is at least one compelling benefit to joining an online syndicate or running one through a third-party website. The fact is that in the unlikely event that you win a jackpot, you’ll be talking about a serious amount of money – and having someone else responsible for making sure that everyone gets their fair share pretty much ensures that there won’t be any heated disputes over who should be getting what out of the deal.

The lottery is not a hard game to play. There is no strategy to implement (other than trying to avoid picking all popular numbers, in the hopes of splitting a jackpot with as few people as possible), and it only takes a moment to fill out a ticket – especially if you’re willing to take a quick pick. Unlike in the case of some other gambling games, you aren’t likely to try online bingo sites because you were too intimidated to buy a ticket in person or because it was too inconvenient to buy them at a brick-and-mortar location.

But that doesn’t mean that you should ignore online lotto sites. They offer up some new and exciting opportunities to play games you’ve never tried before, find people who are willing to chip in towards a shot at a major jackpot, or maybe even get a slightly better deal on the cost of tickets. It’s a whole new way to play one of the world’s most popular gambling games, and it shows that even the simplest offerings can be improved with a little innovation.