h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For the first time in ages, I do. Last year I invested in some Premium Bonds. And came home tonight to find a cheque for £50 had come through my door 'cos one of them had come up.

It's not a huge amount, but being as I took out a six-month interest free credit card balance transfer to avoid cashing in my ERNIE bonds when I put all my savings into buying my flat, I feel kind of justified. Taking into the 'transfer fee' on the credit card, I've even come out £10 ahead...

Having succeeded at one kind of retro-get-rich-slowly scheme, should I start doing the Pools now?

So The Pools still exist? My dad switched over the the Lottery quite some time ago, and he'd always done The Pools.

Well done on your win though - I've had bonds since I was a baby and have never won anything! That was when you could still get them for a pound though, so maybe that's why.

They've recently been cashed in and merged with my brother's bonds, so we've now got £100 bond between us. Whoopee! (There are four of us...)

I was wondering that too, because surely lots of people are thinking that way as the Lottery offers bigger prizes and as more and more people switch from the Pools then maybe they'll die in the end? But I had a quick look and Vernons and Littlewoods Pools seem to be still going. Two million pound prizes and all, seemingly. You can do it online, but then it's just a case of picking your numbers rather than doing it in relation to the football matches that are on the coupon...

So they've taken the skill away? Just picking numbers surely is just a lottery, under another name.

If you're going to gamble, what you should be looking at is the rate of return ie how much is paid out in winnings for every £100 staked.

Genrally speaking the numbers come out something like this:
Pools - 35%
National Lottery - 50%
Horse Racing - 70%
Bingo - 75%
Slot machines - 70 to 80%
Blackjack - 95 to 98%
Roulette - 97.3%

Jeez. No wonder the Littlewood family are (were?) one of the richest in the country.

I must be extremely bad at Roulette then...

http://www.abc.net.au/queensland/conversations/stories/s1956504.htm?brisbane

Download Richard Fiedler. He does a good interview.

The reason for the Pools having such a poor return is because it's a business that came with very high overheads. The local collectors all had to be paid, as did the checkers - it was a manual process after all - at head office in Liverpool, plus the costs of processing all the stake money. A very expensive business indeed.

As for the Littlewoods family (actually called Moores), they are still very rich with assets of around £1.1 billion. Though they no longer own either the Pools or the Littlewoods mail order and department store businesses. That's probably just as well looking at the state of those companies these days.