Saturday Lotto Syndicate

Are All Lottery Numbers Equal?

Twenty Seven Australians went to bed on Saturday night, 19 Dec 2009, thinking they had won maybe $1,000,000.00.

They awoke on Sunday morning to find it was $148,148.27.

Here are the results:  27 winners!

Winning Tattslotto - 27 Winners

Courtesy of http://www.nswlotteries.com.au

I guess they might have a different opinion this morning on the question, “Are all lottery numbers equal?”

The Traditional Lotto Numbers Argument.

Often this is in response to the wrong question – do all lotto numbers have the same chance of coming out.

“Yes” is correct as far as the first ball is concerned – but it is a simplistic answer.  If you are playing a 45-ball lottery and the first number drawn is an even lotto number – then there are 23 odd lotto numbers and 21 even lotto numbers left.  You do not need to be a university professor to work out that there is a slight advantage to an odd number being drawn.

The Human Element of Lotto.

What so-called experts forget is that the randomness of lotto is significantly altered by human behaviour – as the above results show.

All numbers are under 31 – what lotto experts call the “birthday numbers theory.”  Many people use 1 to 31 because they choose their lotto numbers according to the birthdays of family members.  A second human behaviour factor is that most people mark numbers from 1 onwards – with all 6 lotto numbers marked before they get to the high numbers.

Winning Lotto Numbers and Payouts

In general, if the winning lotto numbers are all low, there will be more winners than on an average week.   If numbers are all high, there will be fewer winners than on an average week.  True 99% of the time, but of course there are exceptions to all rules.

A few years ago, a New South Wales State Lottery had 21 winners because all of the winning lotto numbers were low.  In the USA many years ago, a State Lottery analysed the “most played lotto numbers.”  Result:  1-2-3-4-5-6;  if these numbers had come out, there would have been thousands of winners.

What Lotto Numbers Should You Play?

The book, “Winning Lotto Secrets” suggests 1-3 numbers from each third of the total lotto numbers.  For example, in a 45-ball lottery 1-3 numbers should come from 1-15, 1-3 numbers from 16-30, and 1-3 numbers from 31-45;  for a 49-ball lottery it should be 1-3 numbers from 1-16, 1-3 numbers from 17-33, and 1-3 numbers from 34-49.

An analysis of 1,000 winning lottery numbers from Tattslotto shows the above worked for 663 of the 1,000 draws – or roughly, it works 2 weeks out of 3 on average.  All winning lottery numbers under 23, as in the above lotto results, worked for just 13 of the 1,000 weeks – on average, less than once a year.

So not only does it not happen very often, but it pays peanuts when it does win!

If you are serious about winning the lottery, learn the rules!  Check out  “Winning Lotto Secrets“  for lotto statistics, lottery systems and lotto strategies.

For Oz Lotto, the same kind of info is available at www.ozlottoblog.com