Does anyone have a system for the lottery?

Question

Do you have the same numbers every week, or is it the lucky dip?
Has anyone heard of a system using some sort of formula? My partner used to use a system for the pools years ago and it was quite successful, but he can't remember the basis.

Answer 1

There have been studies (but I do not recall a source) showing that in some public lotteries at some times it has been possible to get consistently favorable odds by playing strategically. The key is observing that all numbers are equally likely but some numbers pay off more than others. If you are always playing the numbers that pay out more, you will win as often as the average customer but will win more than the average customer; this is key because the game rules guarantee that the odds are stacked against the average customer. For most lottery games, the organizers take a fixed amount of money and divide it up among everyone who wins. Thus the number that gives you the highest expected winnings is the one that the fewest people chose. Thus you want to avoid popular "lucky" numbers like 7, 13, etc. Lots of people chose birthdays so numbers from 1-31 are less desirable and numbers from 1-12 are much less desirable. Numbers that came up last week and numbers that have come up a lot recently are also good to avoid. For a very small payout game (e.g., a "Pick 3"), if you can stack the odds in your favor, you can just by enough tickets to consistently win money. However, my impression is that for those games, there are often enough people out there who understand these principles that they grab up the "good" numbers (i.e., numbers that people who don't play strategically don't usually take) so that none of the numbers actually wind up being good. However, the principle applies to any lottery game that divides up winnings among all those with winning numbers.

Answer 2

There is no system for the lottery. The pools are decided by sporting events and therefore can have some basis in logic and knowledge of sports. The lottery on the other hand is a completely random event each week. The balls don't remember what happened the last time they dropped. So past draws yield no information about future draws.

If there was a system to beat the lottery it would be won every time by a math genius of some kind.

Answer 3

The Lottery management have a system that allows more and more 'rollovers'.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many ridiculous combinations like 3,4,5,7,18,19?.
Have you ever wondered why they stop issuing tickets one hour before the draw, even though the record of your purchase and number is instantaneous?.
Have you ever wondered where the ball disappears to (albeit briefly) after it drops from the glass tube?.
Have you ever seen the ball enter the tube?.
Have you ever wondered why the machines are so complicated and huge?.
Have you ever wondered who (apart from a few ) the winners are, and where they bought their tickets?.
The American guy who brought the Lottery to Britain was the same guy who tried to bribe Richard Branson and was thrown off the board.
Its BIG business. Theres a lot of money involved with the lottery and where theres a lot of money.....theres a lot of temptation.

Answer 4

There is no system!

It is based on random numbers which, by their nature, cannot be predicted. Those schemes which look at how many times a number has come up are a waste of time because the machines have no memory.

Donate your money to Red Nose Day instead - it will do far more good!

Answer 5

The system is the same for the majority of players........buy a ticket and lose!