Lottery Strategies - Playing the Odds
In the last post, Lottery Tips - Birthday Bias, I showed all of you that insist on using important dates as your lottery numbers, how to do it right; how to play the odds. But, even if you’re a serious lottery player, like me, that doesn’t put a lot of stock in the lucky date strategy, you can benefit from knowledge gained from the graph below. It’s the same graph that I used in the last post. I repeated it here for your convenience. I’m going to use the AZ539 lottery for this example.

Here’s the scenario. You’re a serious lottery player and use the 80% rule that I recommend to determine the size of your play list. The size of the Arizona lotto is 39 numbers, therefore, the play list should contain 31 numbers. You use the analysis power of LONA™ to help you create your play list. You’re confident in your analysis and decide to be more aggressive. Your play list contains 29 numbers.
Of course, many of the numbers in your play list will be between 1 and 31. They didn’t end up in your list because they are your wife’s birthday or your anniversary, but because of your diligent efforts in handicapping the AZ539 lottery.
You decide to place 100 wagers using the play list you created. Here’s your list.
1 2 3 4 7 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 19 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 29 31 32 33 35 37 38 39
Historically, 37% of the winning tickets are made up of numbers between 1 and 31. Therefore, you use LONA™ to create 37 wagers from the numbers in your play list that fall between 1 and 31.
1 2 3 4 7 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 17 19 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 29 31
Next, you use LONA™ to create 63 wagers from the full 29 number list. You now have your 100 wagers for the next drawing. This is called playing the odds.
Let’s understand something here. We have no more idea of which numbers will be drawn in the next drawing than anyone else. The same is true in other forms of gambling like Poker or BlackJack. The player doesn’t know which card will be dealt next. But, he is observant and plays the odds. Does he win every hand? Of course not. But, over time, he does pretty well.
