As others have mentioned, some lotteries publish statistics on the popularity of individual numbers, but I have never seen anything on pairs, triplets, etc. This could be very useful - for example, a lot of sevens might be picked, but if they are almost always picked in multiples (i.e., 777 in a three-number lottery) then picks with only one or two sevens would be good choices if you are looking to avoid other potential winners.
If we’re talking about a sequence of numbers, then I would choose something like:
1 2 3 4 5 6
It’s no less likely to come up than:
1 5 9 17 23 32
But I bet people will think it more unlikely, and won’t choose it.
I remember hearing that 1 2 3 4 5 6 is chosen very frequently (dozens per week) in the English Lottery, so not a good choice.
As stated above, LOTS of people employ this logic. I’ve heard this is one of the most popular tickets to play. I’ve heard anywhere from hundreds to thousands. In the other lottery thread, there was a link I provided said that in the UK National Lottery, as many as 10,000 people played that combination for any given drawing.
edit: Dug up the link.
Yes, that “apparently” is hedging the fact but, suffice to say, I think it’s pretty clear that people play 1 through 6 commonly. I know my father did, and if he did, I bet there are plenty more people like him out there. It’s not a novel idea by any stretch.
The only guaranteed way of winning the lottery is to buy a ticket for every possible combination of numbers.
In fact, this is exactly what a group of investors once did when they realized that the payout for a particular lottery was significantly higher than the cost of buying every possible ticket.
That works fine…unless you have to split the pot. Then, not so good investment.
Actually, the pot was so big that it was worth it for them to pool their resources to buy all the tickets. It was the Irish national lottery, and there were about thirty people involved in the scheme. They won over a million pounds, at a cost of only some £700,000. I don’t know if they split the profit equally, but if so that’s £10,000 apiece, which is not a bad return for just a few days’ worth of work.
People are not good at picking random numbers so if you pick the numbers then it’s likely that others will pick the same. I think you have a better chance of being an only winner if you use machine generated random numbers.
This is a non sequitur. If, as you claim, people are likely to pick the same numbers as each other, then you have a better chance of being an only winner if you do not choose your numbers entirely at random, but rather choose those numbers which your fellow players are less likely to pick. This has been explained repeatedly in this thread.
I don’t think that you’re talking about the same thing as the OP. “Pick three” and “pick four” type lotteries are fairly common, but they aren’t a giant progressive shared jackpot like the mega millions lottery is. Usually they pay out a fixed ratio (in Ohio it was $500 for a pick 3 win … ridiculously bad odds considering you’re getting 500:1 on a 999:1 shot) and so there’s no concern with splitting the prize pool. However, perhaps the issue you may be thinking of would be if one of the state lotteries did not replace the picked balls back into the pool - if that were the case, any sequence with the same number repeated would be less likely to come up than any sequence with 3 different numbers. For instance, if they had 5 of every type of ball (1-10), and the first 2 numbers drawn were 77, then there are only three 7-balls left, as opposed to 5 balls of every other number. I assume that they readd already drawn balls in order to overcome this.
No, the proper comparison would be the value you’d earn by buying 2 tickets of seperate numbers - it’s better to have two shots at $15m than to turn $15m into $20m.
If you really want to increase your chances, first, do not watch the draw. The chances of you winning are unlikely enough, without it happening as you are comfortably sat at home awaiting each number.
Second, don’t even look at your numbers if it is a lucky dip, then scrumple the ticket up and leave it in a coat you hardly wear, but remember to check it a week before its validity runs out.
Thirdly, pick a few consecutive numbers in the 30-40 range - unless someone gets a lucky dip with those numbers, nobody is going to voluntarily pick them… well, now they might, but you see my point!