Disclaimer: No matter what you do, you are unlikely to win big prizes in the lottery. That’s the way it’s designed. The tips here are only meant to provide another way of looking at lottery games and think about ways you can squeeze out ever so slightly better odds of winning some money, or more likely, lose a little less money. Like all lottery commercials I’ve seen, I encourage you to play responsibly, and not use money you don’t have to try to win big.
It’s pretty common knowledge that winning the lottery will make you rich. It’s also pretty common knowledge that winning the lottery is one of those things that probably isn’t going to happen to you or me. This post doesn’t change that. However, if you play the lottery anyway, there are some ways you can mildly improve your chances of winning the smaller prizes and potentially lose less money over the long run.
First, choose your lottery game well. If you’re hoping to win big, pick a game where the odds are most in favor of that happening. Jackpot odds of 1:40,000,000 are terrible, but still way better than odds of 1:175,000,000. Admittedly, the better odds probably have a lower jackpot, but really, they’re both life changing amounts of money that you’re unlikely to win. May as well put the odds as much in your favor as possible. Similarly, if there are two games with similar odds and the bigger jackpot, it’s probably worth going with the bigger jackpot.
Next, consider the rules of your lottery game, as well as the numbers that can be played. Lots of lotteries these days have two separate bins that balls are pulled from. Powerball, for instance, has five white balls and one powerball. Guessing the red powerball correct is an automatic small prize. If you play 35 different tickets, choosing a different red ball number for each, you’re guaranteed to win $4 (but you still paid $70 for a net loss of $66 if that’s all you win).
Naturally, you’d like to improve on that. So what you do is play all the numbers. No, not all the possible combinations of numbers, you’d go broke before you even tried it. (and if you have the money to play every combination, why are you playing the lottery again?) Rather, you play every number that can be drawn in at least one play. Using Powerball as an example again, there are 59 white balls. Assuming you’ve decided to go all in and play 35 tickets to guarantee one of them gets the red ball number correct, you have more than enough plays to cover all of the white balls in a few different combinations. For instance, for your first 12 tickets, you could play the following combinations of white balls:
1,2,3,4,5
6,7,8,9,10
11,12,13,14,15
16,17,18,19,20
21,22,23,24,25
26,27,28,29,30
31,32,33,34,35
36,37,38,39,40
41,42,43,44,45
46,47,48,49,50
51,52,53,54,55
1,56,57,58,59
After that continue to play different combinations that grab all of the numbers for the rest of your plays. Admittedly, the above are not very satisfying combinations of numbers, but assuming the lottery is truly random, they all have just as good odds as any other combination. Please note, however, that my main point is that these number selections allow you to play every white ball possible over the course of multiple plays. You can mix those up however you like so long as you pick all of them at least once. What this does is guarantee that the winning white balls are all on at least one of your winning tickets. Hopefully, they’ll be clumped together on a single ticket of course, but if they aren’t, you have a better chance of winning something by guaranteeing all correct numbers are somewhere on your tickets. You can still win nothing of course. You could pick your numbers in such a way that all of the white balls are on different tickets. No winnings there. And even if you do win, three out of five white balls together (odds 1 in 360.14) is only worth $7.
The other thing to consider is how much money you’re spending on this. If you currently buy two plays a week, you’re paying $4 a week to play. If you want to spend the same amount on the lottery while slightly increasing your odds of winning (or more accurately, losing slightly less money), then you could use the above strategy to play 35 plays at once every 18 weeks. You would play the game less often, but play many more tickets when you do play in such a way that you ever so slightly increase your odds of winning something. What you shouldn’t do is just go spend $70 a week on lottery tickets, because even with these tips, you are still not likely to win big, and you are still likely to lose money proportionate to how many times you play.
So why bother with the above at all? Mostly because better odds are better odds, even if you are still going to lose. May as well make it as a likely as possible that you can win some money, or at least lose less when you play. Also, because it’s interesting to think about how it all works and plays together. In the long run, it’s still a more sound idea to invest the money in a savings account that generates interest, bonds, or some kind of investment account that has a solid record of generating income for investors. But I figure the lottery is probably more fun and if you are going to play, you may as well play with whatever advantage you can.