A lottery is one of the most common forms of gambling in the world however some countires forbid lotteries whilst other governments actively endorse it with the organisation of National Lotteries.

A lottery is the drawing of lots from a range of lots with a prize for the winner(s). Lotteries come in many different formats with different rules, prizes and particpation. It is common for lotteries to be run with cash prizes but equally common is the drawing of lots for goods.

If monetary prizes are fixed then there is a financial risk to the organiser in that if enough tickets are not sold then they will have to pay put more than they have taken in. A popular lottery draw is a 50:50 whereby the total proceeds for ticket sales are split 50% to the winner and 50% to the organiser. This eradicates the risk from the part of the organiser.

More recently Lotteries are enabling participants to select the numbers they wish to enter into the draw. By doing so it is possible that there maybe more than 1 winner. In these instances the prize is normally split equally between all winning participants.

Governments have taken it upon themselves to organise National Lotteries, this brings in massive amounts of revenue for the governments as well as other causes. Normally with National Lotteries there are astronomical odds on winning the jackpot, add to this that you may even have to share the jackpot with other winner makes buying a lottery ticket not a good bet!!!

The probablilty of winning the jackpot in a typical 6 from 49 lottery, pick six numbers drawn from 49(as in the uk lottery) is about 1 in 14million chances. This equates to someone winning the lottery every 250,000 years if they play with the same numbers every week!!!
However the dream of winning and the fact there are other prizes on offer make lotteries very popular indeed.

All major developed countries of the world have there own national lottery of sorts. USA, UK, France, Canada, Russia, Australia , Spain, New Zealand, Poland, Austria, Finland, Denmark, Brazil, Hong Kong, Mexico, Holland, Norway are to name a few.