Premium Bonds Calculator: Have I won?

By Richard Browning for MailOnline

 

How close have you been to winning your fortune on the Premium Bonds? Our unique calculator will try to show you. Other calculators may remind you how slim your chances are of winning but we recognise that everyone likes a punt.

And unlike the official Premium Bonds calculator, you can enter your actual bond number – eg 123AB123456 – rather than your customer ‘Holder’ number.

Our special algorithm will give your bond a score (0-100) depending on how close it is to a winning number. If your score is 100, you’ve won, perhaps!

Premium Bond Match Calculator

Check the latest prizes:

Premium Bond prizes

For everything you’ll ever need to know about Premium Bonds:

Our 50 years of Premium Bonds round-up

Premium Bonds guide

Premium Bonds – rate of return calculator

Five facts about Premium Bonds

About the calculator

Premium Bond ‘numbers’ are formed of a string of characters with twoletters and 6, 7, 8 or 9 numbers. Our calculator will show you howclose you’ve been to netting a fortune in the past 12 months, accordingto the two letters in your bond or the whole ‘number’. And further backfor the bigger prizes.

Remember

• The letters I, O, and U are not used for Premium Bonds numbers.

• Each bond has an equal and separate chance of winning.

• A bond can only win one prize per draw but if is drawn twice it will be allocated the highest prize for which it is drawn.

• Large prizes data available from January 2004*.

• This calculator is for fun only.

And for fans of the maths – how the calculator works

Premium Bond format is XXXAANNNNNN, where X is a digit or space, A is aletter and N is a digit. The entered string of numbers and letters maybe any format.

1) Pad the entered string with spaces if less than 11 characters. Base padding on position of first letter.

2) Compare each character in winning bond with same character in entered string.

3) Give score of:
50: exact match
8: one off (eg. bond character = 5, entered character is 4 or 6)
4: for 2 off 1: for 3 off

4) Multiple this score by character category:
2 for X (first 3 characters)
6 for A (next 2 letters)
2 for N (last 6 numbers)ie. matching the letters is given higher score than matching numbers.

5) Maximum score is therefore 20*2*3 + 20*6*2 + 20*2*6Divide by this maximum and multiply by 100 to give 0 – 100 final score.

(There’s a little bit more complexity when an incomplete bond is entered. But that’s enough of the maths, Ed.)

Check the latest prizes:

Premium Bond prizes

:

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