Oh, the internet, that wild, sprawling mess of a place where dreams are sold by the dozen for less than the price of a coffee. It’s here, in this digital bazaar of the bizarre, that the age-old tango of skepticism and hope gets really interesting, especially when it comes to the world of online lottery systems. You know the type – those too-good-to-be-true promises that prey on the eternal optimist in all of us, whispering sweet nothings about life-changing jackpots just a click away.

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There is a lot of stuff and nonsense about online – we all know that.

One of the areas I see it most is because I’m a pretty big fan of the lottery. If you’ve spent any time at all browsing for hints and tips on playing the lottery… man, I’m sure you’ve seen some total garbage.

The thing that gets me most of all is how gullible some people seem to want to be. Sometimes they want to believe so badly that they are willing to swallow down whatever junk is thrown at them, and oh my is there a lot of it being thrown.

Just look at some of these lottery systems – the reviews there are very short but they are on point and will save you a lot of wasted money on buying stupid stuff. It’s pretty, pretty clear the ones in the bad stuff section are much more interested in banking your money than helping you out. Also read the comments there as you will see a lot of people agree with these reviews because they have been burnt by the stupid stuff too. It’s not all bad as there is some good stuff listed there too but not much as not much good stuff exists.

Even some of the more respectable charlatans resort to such tricks as borrowing winners photos from newspapers and the official lottery companies websites, and then plastering them all over the sales page for their ‘wonder prediction software’. No, of course those winners didn’t use the software, but hey, we didn’t claim they did either… we just let you draw that conclusion by including the images… and sometimes even stating this in the small print as if that is some kind of legal protection against outright misleading lies.

But then there’s the basic premise itself. Predicting the lottery. Seriously?

I mean, there are seriously intelligent engineers, mathematicians and scientists with access to significant resources and incredibly powerful supercomputers who aren’t using them to predict the lottery. I wonder why that could be..!

Could it be because Dave who paid someone $50 to write some code that picks ‘hot numbers’ doesn’t really know better than Prof. Freakin Genius and his Cray supercomputer.

Could it really be that Dave is only interested in how many $50 he can collect from mug punters who “just believe”.

Now there are a few, OK, maybe a couple of characters online who will tell you the truth. One of which gives his lottery tips away for free (I’ve read a lot of his stuff now, check out his blog too which is really good – Lottery Guy is an awesome resource of reliable lottery information, strategy and advice). When you find a real expert like this you won’t be anywhere near as ‘impressed’ or excited but you’ll get told the truth for once instead. That is worth a whole lot more than paying $50 to be lied to or sold a bunch of horse manure because the author of that junk “wants to believe” just as badly but is actually a total incompetent baffoon.

Then there are the ‘experts’ who don’t plain lie but instead choose to use distorted truths to sell their products. Along the lines of, here’s a list of people who have won using our system… list of 10 excited “I won $10 in the very first week” type people… therefore it works. However – where are the real figures – did only 10 people buy it? How many people didn’t it work for? Therein lies the real truth, the one they aren’t telling you. The fact that the other 99.999999999% (god knows how many of these things they sell) of their customers are still waiting for it ‘to work’ still clinging on to the belief because they got suckered in!

Don’t believe the hype friends. There are some sensible measures you can take, and there are some useful bits of software and whatnot for keen lottery players. But don’t assume just because it’s being sold online that somebody somewhere has legally approved anything – because anybody can sell any old junk online these days and get away with it. They just need enough gullible people to want to buy it that’s all.

One of the things I like to do is take stuff apart (of course). Sometimes with the intention of fixing it, others just to see how it works.

I can even put them back together and they normally work too – which is nice.

When I’m not dismantling things to see how they tick, I do have another interest that continues to fascinate me which hopefully one day will help fund a lot more of the taking things apart. Which is playing the lottery. Which if/when I win the jackpot one day will eradicate forever those big swearing moments when the taking apart things results in a shiny new techno-brick.

My personal favourite games are the big UK ones – meaning EuroMillions and UK Lotto. Although technically EuroMillions is multi-country (half of Europe plays – hence the big jackpots!).

Recently however I’ve switched my thinking on playing these. I used to just buy the odd ticket, now however, I play in a EuroMillions lottery syndicate. Simply because it means my chances of winning are soooo much better than just buying odd tickets.

The more observant of you will be shouting – yeah, but you have to share the winnings fool… to which I say (and so do LotterySyndicateReviews.co.uk) – who cares! So far I’ve got to keep all of ‘pretty much nothing’ by buying tickets alone. Now I get a vastly better chance of sharing a big win. All of which makes a lot of sense to me.

If you want to give it a try too, read more about the EuroMillions syndicates here and here. You can play other lottery games in a syndicate type group too, but it was the big jackpots that swayed my decision. If I’m going to share, I still want to win big.

Do you guys play the lottery too? Apparently most of the planet has played or plays regularly, so I’m clearly not alone it seems!

There’s even a song about it “they’re football crazy, they’re football mad”…

And it’s true. Real, dedicated football fans are so crazy mad dedicated to the game that they live and breathe it. They follow their team all over the country, or even follow their national team all over the world.

Now I love a good game. And the World Cup, well, that’s great entertainment.

But I draw the line at spending every last coin to my name on travelling to matches to get a terrible view of the action.

Because that’s the problem with watching most live sports, you can’t really see what’s going on. Oh sure, they sometimes put up replays on a giant video screen, but I can enjoy really watching a game far more from an armchair on my own big screen with unrestricted views.

Of course the atmosphere is different being at the game, there’s a real buzz in the air, not to mention the singing/chanting. But for a casual fan of the game like me, I’d rather set my own atmosphere  – be it a quiet game at home or a lively game with friends in a bar.

Guess I’m just not football crazy then.