Saturday 31 January 2009

lucky dip

Hello,

Today the syndicate says a fond farwell to Redacted, who is leaving us to spend his pound a week in more productive ways.

From now on the bonus ball pot will grow by £15 per week, but we will only be buying 7 lottery tickets.
I would like to discuss the idea that we start buying "lucky dip" tickets, rather than using a fixed set of numbers. This has the following advantages:
  1. I can buy the tickets anytime, even if I don't have our numbers written down.
  2. I don't have to fill in a new slip, or have a new "fastpay ticket" printed whenever the syndicate gets/loses members.
  3. We won't have a particular set of numbers to regret in the unlikely event that the tickets weren't bought.
It has the following disadvantages:
  1. Our numbers would be different every week, so you would have to trust me to check the tickets correctly
  2. Our syndicate agreement would be out of date, so I'd have to re-write it and have you all sign all over again.
  3. The amount of overlap between our tickets would be out of our control, so we would lose the microscopically tiny control we have over the odds/returns on winning multiple small prizes from the same drawn numbers.
Please let me know if you think changing to "lucky dip" is a good or bad idea.

Richard "quorum" B