Lottery National Lottery

Many people choose to play the lottery, or the Euromillions, or even Thunderball. Some people call it a tax on the 'bad at maths'.

Most people believe it is down to luck and luck alone and that there is no cleverer method of choosing numbers than any other.

The fact is - there is a better way to play.

Technically the chances of 1,2,3,4,5,6 coming up are exactly the same as any other combination of numbers you could get. However they have never come up. It may seem random when the balls are drawn, but weight of balls, air flow over the balls can create tiny biases, generating truly random numbers is hard, very hard.

The chances of a four way perfect bridge hand are impossibly low - yet they are occasionally reported by bridge clubs around the world? How is this? Cards not shuffled correctly, barely percievable marks on cards, subconsiously affecting the hand? It's possible - the fact is they happen yet they shouldn't.

Incidentally if you DID choose 1,2,3,4,5,6 you would be sharing your winnings with a great deal of people - it's one of the most popular combinations.

Many people choose birthdays, but this can be flawed too - all the numbers will be below 32, yet most draws have at least one above? And it means if you play low numbers you are more likely to share your jackpot with more people.

We've never had sequences like 5,10,15,20,25,30 either, you are more likely to get certain patterns.

If you look at the last 13 Euromillions draws, the sum of main numbers drawn has ranged between 84 and 222, most have ranged between 100 and 125. So a sum of less than 50 is very unlikely, as is a sum of over 250. The lowest ever Euromillions was 51 and there have only ever been two under 61. The highest sum was 222 and there have only been 2 draws which have been over 208 sum.

So if you are playing numbers that have a sum lower than 50 you probably won't win, if you are playing numbers over 200 you probably won't win.

Some sums have won 10 times in the history of Euromillions, 131 and 137 have both won 10 times. 120 has won 9 times... And several have won 7 or 8 times. (Stats true up to 15/09/2011) So you probably want a sum of numbers that is in that region. Also odds and evens rations show up at markedly different frequencies. number of jackpots all time 5 odd to 0 even = 10 jackpots. Number of 3 odd to 2 even 156 Jackpots.

It applies to the lucky stars too! The sum of 18 has only won 1 jackpot, the sums between 7 and 13 have all won between 36 jackpots and 43 jackpots. Off ot the ones out of that range have won 19 or less. Lucky stars odd to even ration? 0 Odds to 2 Evens - 59 jackpots, 1 Odd to One Even - 234 Jackpots.

Technically there is no reason a winning combination is less likely to appear a second time, however it never has, I would venture that they will eventually in but not for a while, playing a combination that has already won is probably a bad idea.

So my advice? Think about what numbers you play, look at what numbers came up. Yes you need a lot of luck to win, especially to win big - but how much luck you need is probably releveant to how much thought you put into your numbers.