Today's Business Daily carries a story about Toto 6/49 and the likelihood that it is going under:

http://www.businessdaily.../-/hulbrnz/-/index.html

I have always wondered, each time I am tempted to play that lottery, why, in the last eight years, no one has ever won the jackpot.

So, thinking of 8 years x 52 weeks x n thousands of Kenyans that fork out money every week to play the lottery, what are the chances that NO ONE has won the lottery. I guess the variables in themselevs are so many but that must also mean that chances that someone could win are also very likely?

Sorry I am not big in the maths department but happy if some numbers inclined person can share some thoughts.

I'd wager that they only pay out a fraction of what they collect, use another fraction for business overheads, etc - so how have they reached this point without ever having paid out the jackpot and without ever having paid out a serious amount to be shared by 2-3 individuals?

I'm your numbers guy. You see in campus, for those who took mathematics as a course, there was a Basic mathematics unit and one of the topics dealt with was on permutations and combinations.
The difference between these two is that one deals with the probability of the occurrence of events with the events occurring in a certain order whereas the other one deals with the occurence of events occuring but with no particular order associated with the events.
For the Toto 6/49 game this translates as one being able to draw the numbers but with no emphasis on the order with which they were drawn.
Here we use what we are calling combinations since the order doesn't matter.
Note we also consider whether repetitions occur or not.
In our case numbers are not repeated.
To calculate the chance of winning we use the formula n!/r!(n-r)!
Using this formula we find that the chances of winning that lottery in any one draw is 1/13,983,816
The number sounds large but I think the first lotto guys were dishonest since some of the American lotteries have even greater odds and guys hit the jackpot almost all the time.
Of course their country has a higher population than ours but eight years is too long for no one to have won.
I think it is a scam.

Of course they lost out because nobody ever won the jackpot not even once. So why would anyone want to participate in this one while there are many others where people are winning? This was a hoax and Betting Control has failed in it's duty.

I wonder when was the betting control act done because it sounds 1920s and inherited by kenyatta govt in 1963 because the betting control unit is so corrupt such that every game in kenya is 101% scam yet no one has been taken to court .

It's all a scam. I actually know someone who won in one of the sms competitions after paying of someone on the inside. What's worse is that it was being conducted by literally the biggest company in kenya. Fill in the blank on that one. He was told he would pay and lo and behold he was called and told he had won. After receiving the gift in the whole glare of the media he contacted the inside person paid off what they had agreed on and the rest is history. He even shared one of the gifts with me.

Kenyanlyrics you've come down hard on this guy. Just sharing the info for me is enough to tell me to stay away from these scams cause Kenyans have litteraly brought the concept of 'kujuana' into gambling.
Cut the guy some slack.
Anyway I think the biggest company in Kenya is safaricom. If true they should change the name to safaricon.