Frequently Asked Questions about the Virtual Lottery

• What's the URL for the Virtual UK National Lottery ?
  "http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Virtual/"

• How do I play the virtual lottery ?
  Go to the entry form, answer the question posed, choose your 6 numbers, type in your e-mail address (this is compulsory) and click on the "enter the virtual lottery" button. If you have successfully entered (with or without a correct answer to the question), you will receive a "claim security code" (save this by cutting/pasting it into a text file), which you will need to quote if you win.

• Can anyone play ?
  Virtual UK National Lottery players:
  • must be at least 16 years of age and
  • must not be in the list of banned users.

  Apart from the above restrictions, anyone in the world is welcome to enter (unlike Camelot's real UK lottery !) and for free. The pre-requisite of a bank account for players (to allow winnings to be paid by cheque) no longer applies because winnings are now paid into an InterLotto gaming account instead.

• What are the virtual lottery rules ?
  It's a one-entry-per-person free entry draw, held at the same time as the "real" UK National Lottery and using the same 7 balls drawn by the real lottery. You also have to correctly answer a question relating to information on this WWW server in order to retain your chance of winning a prize. Anything else you need to know is in the rules page.

• Why do I have to answer a question as well ?
  To be honest, it's a device to get you to browse around the rest of our MerseyWorld pages :-) The whole idea of the virtual lottery was to "channel" people onto our site, but they need some encouragement to check out the rest of the server, so the idea of what is effectively a "treasure hunt" for the answer was born (any links in the question won't point directly to the page with the answer on !).

• Can I post the answer to the question elsewhere on the Internet ?
  No, not before the closing date of the virtual lottery that the question pertains to. The rules have been amended to prohibit this because it gives an unfair advantage to those people who have access to the answer in this manner.

• What if I match the most numbers, but fail to answer the question correctly ?
  Sorry, but you lose. You must get both the answer right (it's a positive integer to make the answer easier to parse) and match the most numbers to win a prize. Note that you won't be told whether you got the question right or not after submitting an entry (otherwise you'll tell your friends the answer and they'll enter with the right answer...) - the answer to the question will be displayed on these pages shortly after the draw has taken place.

• Hey, why did you cancel two of the virtual lotteries ?
  The virtual lottery draw was almost entirely automatic, but one step (entry log resetting) was fatally manual and this caused me (yes, I was the one to blame) to erase the entries for Virtual Lottery #30. Although it was possible for me to retrieve most of those entries from the last backup, all of that Saturday's entries were lost and I considered it unfair to hold the draw with an incomplete set of entries, so the whole draw was cancelled.

  You'll be glad to know that I've now automated that one manual step (in quite an elegant way I must say myself, but I'm not telling you how) and I also now backup the final entry log file to another location just in case I'm stupid enough to wreck the entries again ! All this should mean that the virtual lottery draw won't suffer the same fate in the future, although it's always susceptible to hard disk failure of course (oh no, I'm tempting fate again...).

  Needless to say, the prophesised disk problems emerged (a full disk to be precise) and caused the cancellation of Virtual Lottery #41. A large slice of extra code has since been added to ensure that a full disk will not disrupt the updating of the virtual lottery entry log (an appropriate error message will be returned instead).

• What are the odds of winning the virtual lottery prize ?
  Assuming that the prize winner was the only person who matched 4 real lottery numbers, then the odds are just over 1,000 to 1 (a 4-match in the real lottery has odds of 1032.4 to 1). However, remember that if more than one person matched the most numbers, then the winner is randomly drawn between them, so the more entrants there are, the less your chances are of actually winning a prize.

• What do I win ?
  Up until virtual lottery #45, an international draft cheque was paid to the winner, if there was one, of each draw. This cheque was paid directly by the virtual lottery sponsor, InterLotto, but involved a fair amount of administration on their part. Hence, it has been decided that, from virtual lottery #46 onwards (draw date: Saturday 7th September 1996), that each virtual lottery winner will have their prize paid into an InterLotto gaming account in Swiss Francs. Once in there, it can either be withdrawn or used to play InterLotto games of course.

  As usual, there is a maximum of one prize winner per draw and any payment disputes will be resolved by InterLotto. The winner of each draw will be e-mailed shortly after the draw with details of how to claim their prize. When the UK lottery midweek draw commenced on 5th February 1997, the virtual lottery prize was split into an average of 50 Swiss Francs for each draw (Wednesday and Saturday) instead of its previous weekly average of 100 Swiss Francs.

• How do I claim a prize ?
  The winner uses the claim form, which requires more personal details, such as the name and address of the claimant and whether they want "publicity" (although the e-mail address of the winner will be advertised on these pages, regardless of the status of the publicity checkbox). Of course, the winner has to supply the claim security code before the claim is accepted. The claimant has until 7.30pm GMT on the closing date of the following draw to claim their prize.

• What's the best way to save my claim security code ?
  Cut'n'paste it into a text file - note that some versions of Netscape prior to 2.0 final actually amazingly re-submit a page if you use the Print..., Save As..., View Source options or even resize the window ! This is detected as a duplicate entry and is rejected, leaving you with a print-out/screen of the rejection and not the security code :-( This incredible bug was fixed with Netscape 2.0 final, so you can safely save or print the security code with that version. The more paranoid amongst you may also wish to encrypt the file containing your saved claim security code of course...

• Why have a claim security code when you've got my e-mail address ?
  It's primarily for security against potential (internal or external) hackers of the Connect server - the code used to generate and encrypt the claim security code is quite complex and claim security codes are never actually stored on the Connect server, unlike all the other details about the entry. In fact, there is no mechanism available for retro-generating claim security codes - you lose the code and you lose the prize.

• If I lose my claim security code before the draw takes place, can I submit a new entry to replace the one with the lost code ?
  I do not allow this via a WWW interface (how do you make sure it's really you and not someone else being malicious ?), but if you e-mail me before the draw day (preferably earlier if possible), I will delete your entry and this will let you submit an entry again.

• What's to stop me from submitting multiple entries using different e-mail addresses ?
  My forms code will detect any "obvious" attempts at this [though if you are clever, you may be able to outwit it] and it logs them in a special file, which is e-mailed to me daily for further manual investigation. Be warned that if you are found guilty of doing this, then all e-mail addresses you submitted may incur a lifetime ban from the virtual lottery.

• Why are you releasing the e-mail address of the winner ?
  Primarily so that people can see that the virtual lottery is legitimate. The really suspicious could e-mail the winner and ask them to confirm that they did indeed play the virtual lottery. Also, the spread of e-mail addresses around the world should confirm that Connect aren't "fiddling" the results in any way.

• Why not charge for entry to the virtual lottery ?
  Because you get into horrendous things like gaming licences and lottery tax at 12%. Also, I think people would expect a) a bigger prize [or maybe multiple prizes] and b) the virtual lottery system to work flawlessly. Also, it's likely that we'd have to accept subscriptions (e.g. for a minimum of 10 draws) rather than single entries to make credit card transactions worthwhile. It's all very messy and much better kept as a free entry draw.

© Richard K. Lloyd & Connect Internet Solutions Limited  2008
Part of MerseyWorld - promoting Liverpool and its surrounding regions