£14K:That’s not a Lotto for six balls
Sun fun before storm... IT’S SURFING UK! FURY AT BIG CUT IN PRIZES
BRITAIN is in for a barbecue weekend before facing winds and deluges from hurricane Maria.
The UK will be hotter than Melbourne, Australia, on 24C, our best weather for a month.
But forecasters say remnants of the killer hurricane will threaten Britain from Friday.
Rachael Adshead, of the Met Office, said: “Later next week may be wet and windy at times.”
ANGER has erupted over the dwindling prize fund on offer for matching almost all the Lotto balls.
In the September 13 draw a total pot of £43,071 was available for getting five numbers plus the bonus ball – and three winners pocketed £14,357 each.
But in a corresponding draw 10 years ago, £1.1million was on offer for the same pot, when 19 punters each won £58,071.
And 20 years ago – in a draw around the same time in September – the prize fund for five balls and the bonus stood at a far bigger sum – £2.89m.
On that occasion 12 winners bagged more than £234,000 each.
Complaints are soaring about the smaller prizes and the reduced chances of winning since organisers added 10 extra balls to the draws in 2016.
The odds of landing the jackpot went from one in 14m to one in 45m. Organisers Camelot declared the move was designed to create larger rolling jackpots.
But punters have been left unimpressed and ticket sales have fallen.
One in five online gamblers in some parts of the UK are now playing America’s monster jackpot Powerball instead. US punter Mavis Wanczyk, 53, scooped £549m last month – the biggest single ticket win ever.
The Lotto draw gets just one star out of five on the website Trustpilot, which monitors online businesses.
One reviewer wrote: “The idiots who thought that increasing the numbers would bring in more money forgot about the human element – the fun of playing with some hope of a win.
“Now it is a joke and conforms to the law of diminishing returns. Takings are down 9% and Camelot are reporting fewer playing.
“Please advise your friends that playing the lottery as it now stands is a waste of time and money.
“I am told by Camelot that the present arrangement is under review.
“But any return to how the lottery was designed to be played will be an enormous loss of face.”
On another web forum a fed-up punter wrote: “It's been in a long, slow, steady decline for years. Camelot have just spread the amount of money spent on lottery products thinly over too many games.”
A Camelot spokesman said last night: “The National Lottery is paying out over 50% more in prizes than 10 years ago.
“The fact that players are coming out in droves to buy tickets for the £134m EuroMillions draw clearly shows that people love the jackpots on offer right here in the UK.”