Winning the Lottery

Thanks for the emails I received from the last post. Feedback is the grist for my Lotto Blog mill, as is the case today. The emails got me thinking about how the odds of winning the lottery jackpot change during the drawing itself. If you can imagine for a moment, millions of people, tickets in hand, watching a lotto drawing on TV. As each number is drawn, the fortunes of millions of lottery ticket holders are changing before your very eyes.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s use the Lotto Texas 6/54 lottery in this example. Of course, if someone doesn’t buy a ticket their odds of winning the jackpot are zero. If someone buys 1 ticket, their odds of winning the jackpot are 1:25,827,165. Now, as the drawing begins things get very interesting.

Suppose you’re sitting in Austin, in front of your TV, watching the drawing. The first number is drawn. You check your ticket and your ticket has that number. What just happened? You’re now in a different league. There are 53 balls left in the machine and you need 5 of those 53 to win the lottery jackpot. Suddenly, your playing a 5/53 game and your odds of winning the lottery jackpot improved to 1:2,869,685. That’s 9 times better than before the drawing started just moments earlier.

So, right there, in that instant, you’re pumped and awaiting that next number to pop out of the machine, while most players in Texas watched their odds of Winning the Lottery jackpot drop to zero.

Tags: General, Lottery, Winning the Lottery by Professor Dolph
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Lottery Number Patterns

In spite of all the examples and evidence offered over the last several posts, there are still a few stragglers who are still reluctant to embrace the obvious.  HOT numbers are really HOT. And, because of their Persistence, any Serious Lottery Player should be consistently including them in their Play List.

The claim that all numbers appear an equal number of times only applies in the long run; after millions and millions of drawings.  But, as far as the lottery is concerned, our lifetime represents only a drop of water in the ocean.  So, what happens in the short term?  Lottery Number Patterns and trends are there to Improve Your Chances of Winning the Lottery.

Now, if these Lottery Number Patterns only provided a small advantage, let’s say 1-2% better than what one could expect by randomly selecting numbers, then there would be little to shout about. But, that is not the case.  We are talking about serious advantages. Advantages that could cause even a professional gambler to soil his pants. We are talking 20% to 40% advantages. Here is what I mean.

If you randomly selected 10 numbers in a 6/54 lottery, over time you would expect to find that 18.5% of the winning numbers came from your list.

10/54 x 100% = 18.5%

Since 6 numbers are drawn, this represents 1.11 winning numbers on the average.

18.5% x 6 = 1.11

So, this becomes our reference point. If you have a lottery strategy for picking 10 numbers, and your lottery strategy provides more than 1.11 winning lottery numbers on the average, then your lottery strategy is performing better than what random number selection predicts is possible. If your strategy does less than this, then sell it to your enemies.

Let’s look at four lotteries to see if including HOT numbers in your Play List is worth your time. We’ll find the reference point for each lottery just as we did above. The HOT number’s performance was calculated from actual data.

Now, I don’t want any of you to soil your pants, but you have to admit, these are some very impressive numbers.

Tags: Improve Your Chances, Lottery, Lottery Number Patterns, Winning the Lottery by Professor Dolph
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Lottery Number Patterns

Over the last couple of weeks, the discussion has revolved around Lottery Number Patterns and in particular the concept of HOT numbers. Critics and skeptics would claim that playing a HOT number strategy is nonsense because you can’t predict what numbers will be drawn in the next drawing. But, the same critics would see no problem with weather forecasting or stock market analysis. However, they would probably harbor critical opinions about handicapping horse races. This is the critics Achilles heal. The litmus test they apply to legitimize computer forecasting is inconsistent.

There is nothing inconsistent about HOT lottery numbers. In fact, HOT numbers exhibit what I call Persistence. A HOT number became so because, over time, it HIT more often than the other lottery numbers. It will only remain a HOT number if it continues to HIT more often; if it’s Persistent. This should be easy to test.

Let’s use the Illinois IL652 lottery in this example. We are going to look at the performance of the top 14 HOT numbers. Why 14? Because there were 14 numbers that HIT more than twice as often as the Coldest number in the Illinois lottery. That represents a serious bias in favor of HOT numbers. Each one of these numbers would be a finalist for the crown of HOTTEST lottery number of the year.

To check for Persistence, we are going to use the Lottery Number Advisor to look at the top 14 lottery numbers as of 11/17/08, 50 drawings ago and 100 drawings ago. If HOT numbers are Persistent, the same numbers will continue to appear in the top 14 list over time.  Here’s the result.

Over a period of 100 drawings, 7 numbers remained in the top 14 HOTTEST numbers list; 1, 8, 16, 21, 39, 43 and 50. They weren’t flukes; they were Persistent. What does this mean to the Serious Lottery Player? If the player had included these numbers in his play list every drawing, then he would have averaged more winning numbers in his play list than he would have if he simply randomly selected numbers.

With so many Lottery Number Patterns to choose from, it will be a tough call. But, who do you choose as your HOTTEST lottery number of the year?

Tags: General, Lottery, Lottery Number Advisor, Lottery Number Patterns by Professor Dolph
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Lottery Number Patterns

For over a week now, we’ve been discussing HOT numbers and Cold numbers and, in the process, we discovered some lottery trends that were previously unknown to anyone; including myself. I was previously unaware of these and they came as very pleasant surprise. In fact, I used the last post to talk about nothing else. It’s been an amazing week.

As great as these discoveries were, their importance still comes in second to the topic we are about to discuss; Persistence.  In the last post we talked about the need for Serious Lottery Players to play consistently; to play the odds over the long haul. But, making a recommendation to play consistently would be foolhardy and foolish if it weren’t for the fact that Lottery Number Patterns exhibit a characteristic that I call Persistence. If lottery trends were here today and gone tomorrow, then ‘Playing Consistently’ would simply translate into ‘Losing Consistently’.

So, are HOT number trends of the ‘Here today, gone tomorrow’, ‘Fly by night.’ variety or are they more of ‘The Stuff Men Are Made Of’, stand on your own two feet,  John Wayne variety? Can they really Improve Your Chances of Winning the Lottery? Over the next couple of days, we’ll be using the Lottery Number Advisor to investigate these questions.

Tags: Improve Your Chances, Lottery, Lottery Number Advisor, Lottery Number Patterns, Winning the Lottery by Professor Dolph
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Lottery Strategies

In the last post Lottery Statistics -Gold in Them Thar Hills , we examined a graph of the Ratio of HOT numbers to Cold numbers for the 6 number lotteries in the US and Canada. I’ve repeated the graph below for convenience. I pointed out that the graph revealed some opportunities for Serious Lottery Players in certain states and provinces. Today, I’m going to discuss the three lotteries that are far above the trend line; DE635, TX654 and NY659.

I stated that, because of the position of these lotteries on the graph, Serious Lottery Player in these states should put more emphasis on the inclusion of HOT numbers in their Play List. So, what did I mean by ‘more emphasis’?

For example, if you played the Delaware 635 Multi-Win Lotto, and you never paid much attention to HOT numbers before, you might start by putting the top 10 HOT numbers in your Play List every drawing. Or, if you always include the top 5 HOT numbers in your Play List, you might change your strategy and include the top 10 HOT numbers in your Play List instead. This, or course, applies to the TX654 and the NY659 lotteries as well. Any variation of this theme would be placing more emphasis on HOT numbers.

But, there is one more very important point to make here; Consistency. The high placement of these three lotteries on the graph didn’t suddenly materialize overnight. The results of one lottery drawing didn’t cause this. It is the result of the performance of HOT numbers over hundreds of lottery drawings. It’s not a fluke; it’s a trend. It is the result of consistent performance biased in favor of HOT numbers over Cold numbers.

Now, I’m sure that some of you will try this strategy in the next drawing and, if it doesn’t work, you will discard it. If you do, you missed the whole point of the last paragraph; consistency. To truly be a Serious Lottery Player you must understand that you are playing the odds. Whether it’s horse racing or poker, playing the odds doesn’t mean you are going to win every race or every hand.  What it does mean is that, over the long haul, you will outperform the average player.

A poker player doesn’t have the luxury of a computer at the table but if you play the ponies, dogs or the lottery the computer is essential. And, a computer is just a boat anchor if you don’t have good software. So, get LONA™, the Lottery Number Advisor on your computer and start playing smart.

Tags: Lottery, Lottery Number Advisor, Lottery Statistics, Lottery Strategies by Professor Dolph
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