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The internet is a wonderful thing. You can now do all sorts of things from the comfort of your own home whenever you used to have to go to a store or put something in the post.

I now rent my DVDs online and they arrive throughout the post and I get my weekly groceries delivered to my door having ordered them from my list of favorites online.

The internet makes things convenient. So when I forgot to buy my lottery ticket again and missed out on a small prize, I turned to the web for help. I was surprised at what I found!

There was as I expected the ability to purchase lottery tickets online from the UK's National Lottery website. Great! No longer did I have to fiddle around with cash or get soaked in the rain going to the store.

In fact they take good care of it all - take the cash from your checking account for the subscriptions automatically in order that you never miss a draw, check your numbers for you without fail and pay you any winnings!

Paying you your winnings probably doesn't sound like a problem - but since the UK National Lottery began in 1994, unclaimed prizes have accumulated to more than Ł650 million [$1.17 billion]!

Checking that your particular numbers have won is probably the most useful service of all - because should you not claim it you do not get it!

A good service - convenient, simple and fun.

Then a couple of months ago I found the next step on - an online lottery syndicate system!

Sure - the official lottery national lottery website offers a syndicate management tool - although not like this one.

I looked at it rather sceptically as anyone with an economics degree might! But I went over the numbers to check anyway. I was impressed.

They operate syndicates with 49 members in each. Then they do something clever - they fix one of the six numbers so that each of the 49 numbers is covered and then with 5 other randomly generated numbers they make 44 separate lines.

This is clever - it means that there are 44 entries and effectively the syndicate only has to match 5 of the 6 lottery draw numbers to win the jackpot - because the sixth ball will always match.

But it's cleverer than that because the syndicate also wins more than the jackpot - another of the 44 lines will win 5 plus the bonus ball and after that of-course another 42 lines also win by matching 5 numbers! Add all those multiple wins together and divide through the number within the syndicate and also you win more than you could have done if you played solo!

In fact your odds of winning increases by 702% within the UK National Lottery Lotto draw!

And they have done the exact same trick with the EuroMillions draw. If you are not familiar with this it's as big as many of the multi-state lotteries within the USA. Why? Because 9 countries in Europe are playing it! And more want to join in!

It really is the largest tax-free lump-sum national lottery in the world!
If you were watching the news earlier in 2006 you may have seen that it rose to an incredible Ł125m rollover (yes - that's in GBP not dollars or euros!)

Being a part on this lottery syndicate increases your chances of winning by an incredible 3600%! Increasing the odds of winning any prize to 1 in 10 and it means you may win a prize by matching just one ball!

So next time you are waiting in line to buy your lottery ticket, running the risk of losing it, or forgetting to check whether you have won, think of how the web can make it simpler for you.

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