I'm not going to advocate the lottery but I will say that some parts of the lottery are better than others. In the UK, a standard lottery ticket is hard to win because several numbers have to match up with the draw. There is more chance of no one winning than anyone.
However...
The national lottery of the UK also supplies scratch cards and they are fixed odds. This means that there are always winners and the chances of winning prizes are quite high, about one in 5 cards have a cash prize.
If you follow some simple rules, you will get more out of it. Firstly, you need loss control, for instance, you need to restrict how many you play in a month perhaps playing only one card per day. Doing more will cause you to lose too much money.
Then you should play in rounds, buying around 30 cards at a time. Then you should take the winnings and use them to increase the number of cards for the next time. Let's say you win back half the value that you put in, that would leave you with 45 cards if they cost £1. Every round that you play you have more winnings. Also, your daily cost will drop because you are only playing one per day.
