What method of playing the lottery has the best chance of winning, by letting the computer select the numbers or by the Player selecting the numbers?

NeedKarma

Neither has been proven to be any more effective if the number draw is truly random.

Lord_Darkclaw

Selct the numbers yourself and choose a sequence that is uncommon - a lot of people choose the ages of their children for example, so if those numbers come up, the winnings are split between a lot of people.

There is, however, no sequence that is more or less likely than any other.. on the other hand, mathmeticians would freak out if numbers like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 came up every week!
Personally, I believe there is something a little more mysterious about it than random numbers.

But while I'm on the subject of gambling...DON'T! (except for an occasional lottery ticket maybe). Even the the most ruthless and successful card-sharks in the world all end up in the gutter. There are no happy gamblers.

jack jackson

i have actually studied this subject in detail by using a deck of cards to represent the numbers [ace of clubs for #1]10 of clubs #10[ace of diamonds#11]10 of diamonds#20etc...or even 52 cards for 52 numbers however you want to devise it. at the time i was using 30 cards to symbol 30 numbers. first you must realize that drawing 5 cards from a 52 card deck are the same odds of drawing 5 numbers from a 52 number lotto grid.etc....now heres the kicker we know that if we draw 4 black cards from a deck, odds are highly favorable that the next card will be red 4:1 ratio, furthermore if the first three were black chances are the next two will be red 3:2 ratio as a matter of fact this should happen 66.6% of the time.the same effect applies with odd and even#'s now imagine that the first 1-26#'s were black and the last 27-52#'s were red you'll get a ratio of 3:2 66.6% of the time, so then it should be true that 2#'s should be odd and 2#'s should be even /and 2#'s should be between1-26 and 2#'s should be between27-52.so heres what you do,/ pick one odd#, one even#1-26 / and one odd#,one even#27-52/ [4] now just toss in the last ball anywhere dont matter, the numbers will fall in this pattern 50% of the time[try this for yourself] quite intriguing, now play 4 grids at one time and DO NOT use the same number twice. you'll be amazed just how close you come. this system does not work on pick3 or pick4 because of dependent trial process. for best results the lower the lotto number grid the more effective this will be. and if you play with 6 numbers aplly your numbers in the same manner. well i hope that answers your question and just in case good luck. please note: these are my own theories and SHOULD NOT be taken litterally.nevertheless i find it fun and exciting for the spirit.

Capuchin

Jack, "grouping" like that is where a lot of statistical baloney comes in. 5 even numbers is more unlikely than 3 odds and 2 evens, but WE DONT CARE ABOUT ODDS AND EVENS, we care about our specific numbers, and every number, on each number drawn, has the same probability.

How about if we took the numbers and replaced each number with a unique symbol. Nothing has changed about the balls and they should draw in the same way, yet your odds and evens theory now has no basis.

The only strategy to win the lottery is to buy more tickets, but the expectation value is always less than the cost of the ticket. Otherwise how do they make money?

go-ask-mom

The best method for winning is wait until you are struck by lightening at least once before playing!!

Capuchin

lol what?

Geoffersonairplane

If you buy 7 million lottery tickets in the U.K. lottery costing £1.00 GBP each, you have a 50% chance of winning approximately £3 - £4 million GBP, but you would be at least £3 million pounds down from taking this risk even if you won..LOL

There is no best combination, each sequence has just as much chance.

i.e. 1,2,3,4,5,6 in the U.K draw has just as much chance as for example: 10,12,24,33,47,49 in a 49 number draw.

Buying more tickets increases the chance but as I wrote above, you better be in for a loss if you put that kind of money into it.

Perhaps the best suggestion I can give is to work out how much you would spend in your remaining lifetime on lottery tickets.

So in U.K terms, if you are aged 25 and you expect to buy 1 lottery ticket costing £1.00 each for 52 weeks in the year, that is £52.00 GBP, and you expect to keep playing the lottery for another 40 years approximately.

So, multiply £52.00 by 40 years which is £2080.00GBP.

So put £2080.00GBP on one draw for 1 week if you can afford to do it and that will increase your chances fractionally of winning. And never ever play again.

Thing is, you'll probably still lose anyway.

Lowtax4eva

the sure way to win is to buy every ticket!

I saw a show on A&E where a group of people spent about 20 million buying a ticet with every possible number combination and won about 200 million.

No chance of losing!

nindzha

This is a little bit of topic but if u like to gambel try playing poker, i think the "odds" for winning money are the highest.