US Powerball
269 million (USD$)
Mon, Jun 05, 2023

Lottery Tips

Our top lottery tips here tell you how to maximise your winnings when those lucky balls appear by sharing your prize with fewer people. All too often the jackpot prize is shared between many people who picked the same winning numbers. You can avoid or minimize this happening to you.

Try to make sure that you pick different combinations of numbers, thus making sure that your lottery jackpot is the life-changing sum you are looking for, or at least that the smaller prizes in the draw won't be shared with too many others and thus end up smaller than ever.

It's a good idea

to avoid having all 6 lottery numbers under 31. While it is not an absolute rule, payouts are generally much lower. As an example, NSW State Lotto (Australia) had 27 First Division winners in its draw on 9 Oct 2000, when all the winning lottery numbers were under 31. Imagine - 27 people went to bed thinking they had won a million - and woke up to find they had $37,037! Lottery experts refer to this as the Birthday Numbers Syndrome.

Playing all the numbers

in your lottery guarantees that you have all 6 winning lotto numbers somewhere in your overall entry. And it only requires 8 or 9 lines. With just one ball guaranteed correct. The odds for this are 1:1,086,008 (45-ball lottery). While it is still a '1 in a million' shot, that is a lot better than a '1 in 8 million' shot! This simple technique takes 2 minutes and requires only 8 games for a 45 ball lottery, 9 for a 49 ball lottery. Any edge you can get in a game with those odds is worth having.

Picking family birthdays

is done by huge numbers of people, whilst this may produce a seemingly random result, using only the numbers (01 - 31) drastically limits the range. Therefore, more people will be choosing those numbers and leaving out the other number ranges. This is by far the most widely used form of number picking, an estimated 40 percent of people use this method!

People like uniform patterns

and many people pick numbers in arithmetic sequences ie 05, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 or 07, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42. This approach is taken by more people than you would imagine.

Has your lotto game

changed the total number of balls? If so, you need to change your lottery numbers. For example, if you are still using numbers up to 40, from when your lotto was a 40 ball game, you need to add some new games or change some numbers with lottery numbers over 40. The total combinations possible from 40 numbers are 3,838,380. The combinations possible from 45 numbers are 8,145,060. If your numbers are all under 40 - more than half the combinations that can win are missing from your games!

A 20-year study

by leading lottery survey shows that the most probable winning lotto result has 3-odd lottery numbers and 3-even lottery numbers. This comes out '1 week in 3' (on average) and represents 33.5% of the 8,145,060 possible combinations. Add 4-odd lottery numbers plus 2-even lottery numbers, and 2-odd lottery numbers plus 4-even lottery numbers - and you cover 81% of all possible results. Or to put another way, these three game types win (on average) 8 weeks out 10. The '8 weeks out of 10' rule above is reasonably consistent across all 6-ball lotteries - check it out for your lottery.

Don't make patterns

on the lottery playslip (shapes, diagonals, straight lines etc - in any direction). Any number of people do this, literally! If you do win a prize, it will be shared between a vast number of people.

Many people pick numbers

that have appeared recently, believing them to be lucky. This isn't a good tactic because statistically these numbers have less chance of appearing again in the near future.

Lotteries or lotto’s are a game of chance, whichever numbers you choose, they all have an equal chance of being the winning numbers. However, if you avoid picking numbers that many other people pick, you can significantly increase your winnings when the correct balls do appear.