How to Win at Euromillions

Euromillions is a European lottery game that was created in 2004. You have to be a resident of a European country in order to participate, even though some European syndicates allow people all over the world to participate. The first ever Euromillions draw took place in Paris on "lucky" Friday, February 13, 2004. Since then, there has been a Euromillions draw every single Friday and you can buy a ticket for €2 per panel.

In order to play Euromillions, you must pick 5 numbers ranging from 1 to 50, and 2 lucky stars, ranging from 1 to 9. The jackpot is won when one or more tickets match the 5 numbers plus the 2 lucky stars. The biggest ever Euromillions jackpot was €183 on 17 November 2006, after there was no jackpot winning ticket for 11 successive draws; on the 12th draw, as there was still no tickets matching the 5 numbers and 2 lucky stars, the jackpot was divided amongst the 20 participants with tickets matching 5 numbers and 1 lucky star.

After a few unsuccessful attempts in winning the Euromillions jackpot, I tried to devise a Euromillions winning strategy but all I could come up with was a list of grossly unreasonable ways to win the Euromillions jackpot (except maybe the last one). Here they are:

With one out of 76,275,360 chances of winning the jackpot, you could try playing every single combination of numbers and lucky stars, but it will cost you €152,550,720 and unless you invest in some expensive equipment or manual labour, you might spend the rest of your life (and a few pens too) filling out Euromillions panels.

You can set up a Euromillions website syndicate and charge all your members €0.50 per panel to make it very attractive; as in the first strategy, you will need to buy 76,275,360 panels and pick all the possible combinations; you will need a minimum of 305,101,440 syndicate members and you will have to tell them that the numbers are being picked by a software so they can't pick their own; you will need to give them a receipt of their numbers so give every body the same set of numbers, preferably an unlikely winning combination, such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 1, 2, or if you can get away with this, wait until after the draw to give them their numbers. Keep the big winnings to yourself and distribute the smaller prizes to the rest of the syndicate. Then book a plane ticket under a false identity and run far, far away (it is a good idea to make such arrangements beforehand, for a quick getaway, unless you fancy some jail time).

Hire a medium to see the Euromillions winning numbers for you. What are you thinking? If this was possible, all the mediums all over the world would play Euromillions and win every week and we can't live in a society full of rich mediums, can we?

If you can somehow prove that the system drawing the Euromillions winning numbers is rigged, you can file a lawsuit against Euromillions and get all your losing tickets reimbursed to you (good idea: over a period of time, collect other people's tickets too, just tell them you are doing some interior decorating). The odds of winning are very small but not as small as actually winning the Euromillions jackpot.

Build a time-machine, watch the Euromillions draw before everybody, write down the winning numbers, get back to the present and buy your ticket. Watch the Euromillions draw on T.V. (warning: you might experience "déjà vu") and try to act surprised when you collect your winnings.

If you are very, very lucky, you can just buy a Euromillions ticket and choose whatever numbers you like and you might win the jackpot; this has been known to happen, you know!