Some Strategies

We'd all like to be able to increase our chances of winning prizes, but we are up against the cold hard wall of probability. The chances of winning a first, second or even a third divisional prize from any one set of six numbers, are very remote. If you could arrive at a set of numbers via bias in the drawing machinery, that would as much as double your chances of winning (not likely, if the randomness of the drawing machine is any good, which it is likely to be - although the lotto agency has felt the need to change the machinery in the past), the chances of winning the high order prizes are still very remote. ie. In that hypothetical situation, the chance of a single standard 6 number game would jump from 1 in 8,145,060 to 2 in 8,145,060, for the 6-From-45 competition.

Fourth and Fifth Division Only
Top-down System Selection
Using Unpopular Numbers
Use of Past Winning Numbers
The Second Best System in the World (and the First!)

As we have emphasised throughout, the fun in lotto is in playing and trying to locate any little variation from expected probabilities, patterns that shouldn't be there by chance alone.

Despite this emphasis on fun, always bear in mind, particularly if you want to forward us suggestions for future versions of LottoCheck INFORM, that we aim to give you the best tools and best information (quantity and factual) for tracking down and gauging such variance.

1. Fourth and Fifth Division Only

When you are doing evaluation runs comparing different Game Sets or Systems, or doing Profit and Loss Charts, it can be useful to ignore the high order prizes. Fourth and fifth division prizes are the only two which appear frequently enough to attach much statistical significance to.

2. Top-down System Selection

One useful technique using LottoCheck INFORM, is to do a top-down System search before you spend a single dollar. What you do is start with System 20s trying various combinations using the Check Game Set on Draw History feature. As a performance measure, compare them on only the 4th and 5th divisions they have won, as discussed above.

Because a System 20 will win tens of thousands of 5th divisions over the draw history and at regular intervals, if one System 20 won twice as many as another, you can be sure that the difference is statistically significant.

Of course almost nobody can afford to put on System 20s, so the next series of steps involve pegging it back to a System you can afford. Let's say you areaiming for a System 7 which has performed above average in the past. The next step involves throwing out one of the twenty numbers. So test 20 System 19s by excluding each number in turn. Pick the best System 19, and in turn test all 19 different System 18s and again pick the best. Continue this process until you are down to a System you can afford. Remember, just because a System performed well in the past is no guarantee that it will continue to do so.

3. Using Unpopular Numbers

One statistically sound method of increasing your winnings when your numbers do come up, is to choose unpopular numbers - ie. Numbers that people avoid. In this way, when you do win a prize it will pay a higher dividend as less people will be sharing it. The difficulty then becomes that of knowing which balls are popular and which ones aren't. You can initially make some educated guesses. For example, many people put in the day and month of their birthday, thus 1 to 12 should be more popular than 13-31, which in turn should be more popular than 32 to 45. Number 13 is considered unlucky by many. Many Chinese people consider 3 lucky and 4 unlucky.

A lot of people don't like putting on consecutive sequences of numbers such as 4,5,6,7,8,9 yet the chance of them coming up together is statistically the same as any other group of six numbers. So while the individual numbers may not be unpopular, the string of them together probably is.

The best way to test the actual popularity of such sequences is to find a draw in the past where they actually came up. If such a draw can be found, see what dividends they paid, then compare those dividends with the average via the Average Winnings feature. The higher the number of winners, the more popular are the numbers - so avoid them!

4. Use of Past Winning Numbers

Some people base their games on sets of past winning numbers. Their subjective reasoning goes like this: if there is any bias in the balls or the machinery used to draw them, then the most biased numbers will be amongst the winning ones more often. Some people then, simply put on the last X winning combinations of six numbers.

As an example of people probably doing this, look to Draw number 916 (Tuesday, 29th January 1991) in the NSW database. There was an extraordinary high number of First Division winners, 85 of them! As it happens, the same 6 winning numbers (1, 6, 29, 30, 40, 42), were the winning combination back in Draw number 817 on Monday the 19th of February 1990, less than a year earlier. [This earlier draw is not in the NSW database on the disk, as it was the earlier GoLotto game which had only one supplementary number rather than the current two.]

5. The Second Best System in the World

Generally when people feel lucky, when we 'feel it in our bones', we like to splash a bit of cash on lotteries. Intuition is as good a reason or better than any other.

However when we are feeling unlucky, it's tempting to stay out of them altogether. But never forget that you've got to be in it to win it. Like all areas of life itself, there are participants and there are spectators, and in each activity we choose which side of the fence we are on. Remember that you can participate in lotto for as little as four games which costs a mere $1.45 in 6-From-45 on Saturdays, or $1.20 in NSWs 6-From-44, or one game in OZ lotto for $1.10 (Prices displayed here, as at Nov'94). At that cheap price, your odds are in the same ball-park relatively speaking, as people spending ten times as much. If the gods are going to smile upon you, they can do it via a single Game. Just don't bank on winning the Big One, then if it does comes along, its cream on top of whatever else your doing in life.

Note 1: The information above, is an edited extract from the User Manual from our 'LottoCheck INFORM V2 for Windows' software package.

Note 2: The Best System in the World is really to give and be given a ticket - it's the good karma.

For details on a pragmatic lotto software package, with no marketing exageration about your actual chances of winning: <Click Here>.

For myth-shattering explanations covering the most outrageous claims made by some marketers of other lotto software: <Click Here>.

Contact/Feedback:

Solid Software Pty Ltd

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Postal Address: P.O. Box 218, Belgrave, Victoria 3160, Australia
Phone/VoiceMail: +61 3) 0407 544 260
Email: gosh 'At' solidsoftware.com.au

This page last updated: July 2006.