Sunday, June 27, 2010

Irish Lotto Statistics: Skipping Groups of Ten

When you play the Irish Lotto, you must select 6 numbers ranging from 1 to 45.  Do you think it is safer to spread your chosen numbers so that they are evenly spread?

One thing that can be noticed when studying the past Irish lotto draws is that a lot of the time, one or more groups of ten does not come out. The groups I am talking about are:
  • 1 to 9;
  • 10 to 19;
  • 20 to 29;
  • 30 to 39;
  • 40 to 45.  
You can see that this amounts to 5 groups, so it would be logical to think that picking 2 numbers from one group and 1 number from every other group would give you more chances to win, but this is rarely the case: in fact, out of the last 112 lotto draws, in 98 of the draws, one or more groups of ten were skipped (that is 87.5%).

Another thing I have looked at is that since the last group (40 to 45) includes only 6 numbers, how likely is it that numbers from this group would be skipped alltogether in a draw? It turns out that 52 out of the last 112 draws did not include any of these numbers (46.43% of draws skipped the last group). When comparing all the groups of ten together, here is what I have noticed:
  • 1 to 9: 30 out of 112 draws skipped this group (26.79%);
  • 10 to 19: 24 out of 112 draws skipped this group (21.43%);
  • 20 to 29: 20 out of 112 draws skipped this group (17.86%);
  • 30 to 39: 17 out of 112 draws skipped this group (15.18%);
  • 40 to 45: 52 out of 112 draws skipped this group (46.43%).
For some reason, it looks like some groups are more popular than others; this is something to consider the next time you select your lotto numbers, don't you think?

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Irish Lotto Statistics: Even and Odd Combinations

How do you pick your lotto numbers? I know a lot of people pick birth dates, ages or any other numbers that their think are lucky, not really thinking whether their lotto numbers combinations are likely to be picked.

Theoritically, every single possible lotto numbers combination has the same chance to be drawn, but this is not what happens in reality, this is why I am convinced that choosing your numbers carefully can increase your chances of winning. For example, if you picked 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as your lotto numbers, would you expect to win a lotto jackpot? If you are a serious lotto player I bet you are careful to spread your numbers a little more than this (don't go the extreme way by spreading them exactly either, they are supposed to be random, not calculated).

It is the same with even and odd combinations: in the previous last 109 lotto draws, 1 had only odd numbers, 4 had only even numbers while 85 had either 3 even/3 odd, 2 even/4 odd or 4 even/2 odd numbers, with a slight majority (36 out of 109 draws) having 3 even/3 odd numbers.

So if you have not yet picked your numbers for tonight's lotto draws, maybe these statistics could give you something to think about. Of course there is a possibility that only even numbers or only odd numbers come out; after all, it has happened before, but if I were paying for a lotto ticket, I would rather put the odds on my side (excuse the pun).

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Irish Lotto Statistics: Hot And Cold Numbers

I have been studying past Irish lotto results for the last week. The National lottery website used to have a page of statistics but that was pretty useless since they changed the lotto draw from 42 to 45 numbers and their statistics showed results from before and after the changeover.

I took the last 108 main lotto draws (starting 3rd June 2010 until 12th June 2010) and copied the 6 first numbers from each draw into a spreadsheet in order to see if there are any numbers that come out more often than the rest. Here are my observations so far:
  • Some numbers look like they are unlucky : 43 came out twice in the last 108 draws, 1 came out 7 times, 12, 25 and 31 came out 8 times and 5 came out 9 times.
  • Now for the hot numbers (those that come out more often: 2, 3 and 24 came out 20 times over the 108 last draws, 9, 15, 32 and 34 came out 19 times, 4 and 7 came out 18 times and 10, 18, 20, 36, 39 and 40 came out 17 times.
What to make of these observations? If I were to pick my next 6 lotto numbers, I would pick a mixture of cold, medium and hot numbers as follow: 1 cold number, 2 or 3 medium and 2 or 3 hot numbers because I think that I would have a better chance of winning this way than if I picked all hot or all cold numbers.

Of course I could be mistaken, and it could take the next 10 lotto draws to turn some of the above cold numbers into medium or even hot numbers but for lack of a better insight, that is what I would personally go for right now.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Winning My Lotto With Responsible Gambling

Playing lotto is a form of gambling which, if not done responsibly, can quickly become out of control and make people spend money they cannot afford on lotto slips.

This blog is not about winning the lotto jackpot at all costs: it is more about studying probabilities and trying to win a decent lottery prize without spending too much money on lottery tickets.

I strongly advise against taking any advice from me or from anyone else about lottery systems that you do not fully believe in. In fact, I hope that you will be testing the methods I am sharing with you before playing with real money (I know this is what I will be doing).I cannot be held responsible for any loss that may be incurred by using any of the methods I will be writing about.

If you feel that you are at risk of becoming addicted to playing lottery games, please stop reading this blog and look for advice from a gamblers' helpline.

Now that I have cleared the air, I can get on with Winning my lotto.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Winning My Lotto

I have decided that I am going to win the Irish lotto. I am not a guru, I am not going to sell you a bullshit system that doesn't work, even though I am going to add a few affiliate links in there somewhere that you are free to buy or not. All I need is for you to be patient, as I am learning as I go, but you must know that I am determined in finding a way to increase my chances of success at winning the Irish lotto.

I have looked at several lotto systems that are available on the net, some of them free, some of them not, and I have played a few panels in the past and I have won twice: 42 Irish pounds nine years ago (yes, that was before the Euro became the common European currency) and €10 two year ago. Like most lottery players, I have spent more money on lotto tickets than I have won.

Today, this is all going to change: I am going to study a few lotto systems and try them out; not with real money at first, but if I find a system that is not too expensive to use and that seems to work, I might try it out for real.

The first thing to do is to study the last lotto draws: I am working with the Irish lotto because I live in Ireland. I am going to ignore the lotto plus draws for a start, as they just make things too complicated.

To play the Irish lotto we must pick 6 numbers between 1 and 45 (it used to be 42 but unfortunately this was changed to 45 a few years ago). For geeks and mathematicians (and I know they are out there somewhere), this gives us a big number of possible combinations to choose from: 45 x 44 x 43 x 42 x 41 x 40 =5,864,443,200 possible winning combinations.

Given the fact that each panel costs €1.50 to play, if we were to play all the possible lotto combinations, we would have to spend €8,796,664,800 on lotto tickets. The Irish lotto jackpot can range between €1.5 and €14 million, depending on when the last big prize was won, and in the event that we win, we may have to share the prize if there is more than one winning ticket, so simply playing all the possible combinations is not only extremely impractical (I imagine it could take up to a month for the poor sod who decides to fill in the lotto tickets, and another few weeks for processing all the tickets), it does not guarantee that the win will be higher than the spend, even in the event of a big rollover.


Since I am very stubborn (it is not always a default, especially if you call it determination), I am not going to stop here in my lotto winning quest, and there are a few things I need to look into, that will greatly reduce the number of conbinations, especially if I am willing to settle for a slightly smaller prize: instead of winning ONE huge prize, maybe I can win SEVERAL smaller prizes and a lot of the possible combinations that have a minimal chance of being drawn could be eliminated in order to reduce the outlay.

Time is getting on, and there is no rush for winning my lotto, so I will take time to study these later on. If you want to follow my progress and be part of my big lotto adventure, bookmark this blog or subscribe to my RSS. I am a real person just like you, and I hate BS as much as you do. I have lots of free advice that could make you rich as long as you stay wise and don't go crazy on spending lots of money on lottery tickets.