Lottery Systems

Lottery systems are ways of playing lottery games that are supposed to increase your chances of winning. While the only sure way of increasing your chances is to buy more tickets, advocates of these strategies insist that they actually do improve your odds. In this article we look at three of the most common systems.

We explain why they really don’t have any more chance of winning than purchasing the same number of tickets using simple Quick Picks / Easy Pick selections.

Hot and Cold Numbers
One very common lottery system involves keeping track of how many times each number in the game has been drawn. Those that have been drawn most often are known as hot numbers and those that have been drawn least often are known as cold numbers. The idea is that, by choosing hot numbers to continue being hot and cold numbers to make up for their absence, you have more chance of winning.

Repeaters
Another system requires lottery players to make selections based on numbers that have been drawn in recent weeks. The theory here (though very much half-baked) is that a few numbers will be repeated in the next few draws. By focusing on recently drawn numbers, the theory goes, you're more likely to catch these repeaters when they appear again.

Potent Groups
Some systems insist that certain groups of numbers are more potent than others. For example, one strategy states that if you are playing a lottery that requires you to select six numbers, you should choose three numbers from the lower half of the available range and three numbers from the upper half. Other theories say that you would be better off selecting consecutive or non-consecutive numbers, and still others focus on selecting numbers that are predominantly odd or even.

The problem with all of these lottery systems is that they don’t work. Every lottery draw is a unique and independent event, and the numbers that have or haven’t been selected in previous draws don’t have any influence over which numbers will be selected in the next draw. This means that entering ten lines of hot numbers, repeaters or potent groups will give you no more – or less – chance of winning than entering ten Quick Picks / Easy Pick lines. If such systems amuse you and increase your enjoyment of lottery games, by all means use them. Just don’t fall into the trap of thinking that they will do anything more than that. Otherwise, make things easy on yourself and use our Powerball and Mega Millions random number generators.