National Lottery: A £50m jackpot... but there are better ways to bet your £2

The price is big, the chances small

The UK's biggest ever Lotto jackpot of £50.4 million has sent ticket sales soaring (PA)

Taking part in the Lotto is a notoriously bad investment — the prize is huge but the chances are tiny, meaning your £2 stake is not the soundest investment you could make tonight.

Other options might include betting on the horses, or on the stock market - although getting such a huge return from the horses is difficult and the stock market isn't likely to give you overnight success of a lottery winner.

Nonetheless, the temptations for an instant win of up to £50 million will prove too great for many to resist - with up to 200 people a second expected to buy tickets in the hour before the draw (at 8.30pm).

Below, the Independent's Associate Business Editor, James Moore, looks at other ways punters could have made £50m in the past, what you'd need to do know - and why you should avoid numbers under 40 in the lottery tonight:

1. In 1990, a world record 279,256-1, 12-race greyhound accumulator bet was tipped by The Sportsman Mark Sullivan. You’d (only) need to have wagered £179 on that to win £50m.

2. In 2008, punter Freddie Crags wagered 50p on a eight-horse accumulator that came in at odds of 2,789,000-1 making him Britain’s third betting shop millionaire at the time. A £20 stake would at those odds would have netted him £50m.

3. Correctly picking all six winners at Kempton’s King George meeting on Boxing Day would have netted £2,547.2 to a £1 stake. You’d have needed to put £19,629 on the correct six horse accumulator to get you to £50m.

4. Got £3m to spare? If you put it on current ante post Grand National favourite Many Clouds, that would get you close to the £50m jackpot.

5. A 50p accumulator on Frankie Dettori’s Super Seven at Ascot (the ebullient Italian won every race on the seven race card) netted £12,047.50 at the bookmakers’ starting prices, and around £120,000 based on morning line prices. A £20 bet would, again, have got close to the mark, although you’d have needed £200 after frightened bookies had crunched the odds on Dettori’s mounts.

6. Of course, bookies aren’t stupid and they have a habit of imposing pay out limits, so your chances of ever getting £50m out of even one of the big firms are non existent. To maximise your chances of a bumper lottery payout, however, go for high numbers - many people base their selections on birthdays.

Tonight's jackpot of £50.4 million is the largest in UK history, eclipsing the previous record of £42 million in 1996.