Planning to win the lottery tonight? You’d better get your tickets early

And @scott_allen90 added: “hopes of winning thelottery as decreasing… website is down”.

If no-one matches six numbers on Saturday, the next tier of winners will share the Lotto prize.

“If you play variants of your birthday or “lucky” numbers that’s a strong possibility”, writes Alex Tabarrok for Marginal Revolution.

Buying a ticket for today’s national lottery draw makes mathematical sense for the first time in its history.

Camelot said it would do everything it could to ensure people could buy tickets and reminded people they could buy tickets from 37,000 retailers as well as online.

Camelot said this would make it “some of the best odds players have ever had to win a multi-million pound life changing jackpot”.

It is expected there will be a record number of ticket sales for this weekend’s Lotto, prompting a National Lottery spokesman to encourage players to buy their tickets as early as possible to avoid a last minute rush.

Camelot had been expecting to be selling more than 400 tickets per second in the last hour before sales close at 7.30pm.

So no one has won it since November 14.

He said: “If nobody gets all six numbers tonight, then the money will be shared between those who match five balls”.

Senior lecturer in statistics at Nottingham Trent University, James Hind, said that with the increase in numbers, the chance of scooping the top prize has increased from one in 14 million to one in 45 million.

Two players shared tonight’s biggest-ever Lotto jackpot, and each ticket-holder will be starting 2016 £33m richer.

“Don’t delay getting your ticket as giant jackpots and millionaire making on this scale mean it is going to be one of our most popular draws ever”.

“Big lottos are very important to our business and obviously with the extra number that they have created with lotto that was part of the plan to have bigger jackpots so there would be bigger participation in the lotto”.

However no one matched all six numbers.

Players buying tickets in person reported long queues at National Lottery outlets.

National Lottery will also stream it on their YouTube channel and you can watch it back on iPlayer if you win and want to relive the moment.