From wikipedia
In a 6/36 lottery, the odds of matching all six numbers and winning the jackpot are 1 in 1,947,792. At an original cost of £0.50
Irish punt (€0.63
euro) for each six-number combination, all possible combinations could be covered for £973,896 (€1,236,848). When the jackpot reached £1.7 million (€2.1 million) for the May
bank holiday in 1992, a 28-member
Dublin-based syndicate organized by 43-year-old half-Polish businessman Stefan Klincewicz attempted to buy up all the possible combinations, thus guaranteeing a jackpot win. Klincewicz and his team had spent six months marking paper playslips in preparation for the "sting." Although the National Lottery attempted to foil the plan by introducing a limit on the number of tickets any machine could sell, and by switching off terminals Klincewicz's team of ticket purchasers were using heavily, the syndicate did have the winning numbers on the night. However, two other winning tickets were sold, so the syndicate was able to claim only one third of the jackpot, or £568,682 (€722,226). Many smaller match-5 and match-4 prizes brought its total winnings to approximately £1,166,000 (€1,480,000), representing only a modest profit after expenses. Klincewicz appeared on the popular talk show
Kenny Live and later cashed in on his shortlived notoriety with a popular self-published lottery-system book entitled
Win the Lotto.
To prevent such a scheme from recurring, the National Lottery changed Lotto to a 6/39 game in August 1992, raising the jackpot odds to 1 in 3,262,623. To compensate for these longer odds, the company added a "bonus number" to the drawings and awarded prizes for match 5+bonus, match 5, match 4+bonus, match 4, and match 3+bonus. In September 1994, Lotto became a 6/42 game, which made the jackpot odds 1 in 5,245,786. The National Lottery made this change to generate bigger rollover jackpots, partly so people living near the border with
Northern Ireland would not forsake Lotto for the significantly higher jackpots available in the 6/49
British National Lottery, which began operations in November 1994. At this time, the National Lottery also introduced computer-generated "quick picks" as an alternative to marking numbers on paper playslips. Some smaller retailers now only offer the quick-pick option.
In 1998, the cost of Lotto rose from £0.50 to £0.75 per line of six numbers. With the introduction of the new
euro currency on January 1, 2002, the cost became €0.95, and was shortly thereafter rounded to €1.