Winning The Lottery On A Shoe String

by Robert Perkis / Lotto-Logix cr2005

My biggest surprise was to discover the more I spent the worse I did. Oh I could buy 120 lines and win a 3# prize 8 or 9 times out of 10 or buy a 163 line wheel and win a 3# prize every time. Trouble was, those 3# prizes don't pay the rent and they didn't upgrade into better then the occasional 4# win. In Florida the 4# wins didn't even cover the cost of play in that draw let alone allow you to play on the state's money for months.

What I did find. The times I couldn't afford to play more then a few lines and was forced to use brain power to construct combinations, instead of just letting the software go-for-it, the better I did.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for authors of credible lottery software. While I've never found one that predicted winning numbers better then random, the other features of charting, wheeling and filtering have proven invaluable for working out the best ways to play.

Let me show you three of the worlds most powerful place holder or pointer number lines. What we call a wheel or cover design. Naturally you would substitute your numbers for mine, but the matrix positioning would remain the same. Notice how they are in blocks or bricks of 3 numbers:

01-02-03, 04-05-06, 07-08-09.
__-__-__, __-__-__, __-__-__
01-02-03-04-05-06
01-02-03-07-08-09
04-05-06-07-08-09

Say for example you are playing in a 6/49 game where the odds of 6 numbers among 6 are 1 in 13.9 million. So any line or quick pick you buy is a long shot.

The simple act of selecting 9 numbers rather then 6 lowers the odds of having 6 winning numbers among any set of 9 to only 1 in 166,474.00 !!! Hard to believe, but true. If the lottery allowed you to select 9 numbers on your ticket (only 3 more then the 6 they currently allow) the lottery jackpot odds would drop from 1 in 13.9 million to 1 in 166,474.00 thousand, that's like a 98.6% reduction and we can improve on that.

Of course the fly in the soup is we're not allowed to pick 9 numbers on a ticket we're only allowed to pick 6 and if we were to make up every combination possible with 9 numbers it would take 84 lines.

However what we can do is abbreviate those 84 lines into the set above that guarantees a lower tier prize at a far lower cost to play.

If all 6 winning numbers are among the 9 you are playing on the above 3 lines, you would have a 3 in 84 chance of winning a jackpot or you would have a 67% chance of a 5# win and if that doesn't happen you would have 3-4# winning tickets!

If only 5 winning numbers fall among the 9 you would win one 4# prize and 2-3# prizes.

If 4 of the winning numbers fall among the 9 you would have a 35% chance of a 4# win or you would win 2-3# prizes.

Clearly just about any kind of win with these powerful three lines accomplishes the mission of winning enough to play free on the state's money.

You don't have to buy a full wheel to try for a jackpot.

Study the three lines and you'll find each group of 3 numbers appears twice coming in contact with each group one time.

01-02-03, 04-05-06, 07-08-09

01-02-03 + 04-05-06
01-02-03 + 07-08-09
04-05-06 + 07-08-09

What if you happened to have two groups of 3 numbers correct? Well by this method those two groups must come together to form a combination and therefore that combination must win a jackpot as all six numbers would correct on one line!

The Jackpot Shot is based on your positioning of the numbers below the pointers. It makes no difference to the guarantees of the wheel and can be an important part of your lottery play or you can totally ignore that aspect until you reach that point in your prediction skills. In other words, it's in there free whether you try for it or not.

This is a trick of the lottery sages before computers began building wheels by brute force. We experts begin our wheels like laying down bricks to build a solid foundation for a jackpot shot and then we guarantee the lower prizes. We now know we can often squeeze a tiny fraction of a percent coverage for unclosed prize tiers by abandoning the jackpot shot, but it is a high price to pay for such a small reward.

Next we will build a second set of lines three numbers up from the previous set.

04-05-06-07-08-09
04-05-06-10-11-12
07-08-09-10-11-12

Cool, a second powerful set of 9 numbers, but wait a minute the first line is the same as the third line from the previous set. Let's merge the two and bring the 01-02-03 group in contact with the 10-11-12 group

01-02-03-04-05-06
01-02-03-07-08-09
01-02-03-10-11-12
04-05-06-07-08-09
04-05-06-10-11-12
07-08-09-10-11-12

Interesting blend, we still have two very powerful sets of 9 numbers with an overall guarantee of 4if6in12. If all six of the winning numbers fall among the 12 without being all among either set of 9's prizes, we are guaranteed a 4# win and up to 4-3# wins.

Why would we want to play 12 numbers rather then 9 you ask?

Because the odds of all 6 winning numbers being among 12 in a 6/49 game are 1 in 15,134.00 thousand.

Unfortunately the 4# prize winning power stops at 12 numbers in 4 groups of 3 numbers. We can add a fifth group for a total of 15 numbers, but the prize winning coverage of a 4# prize drops to 75% and only a 3if6 prize is guaranteed, but we do have multiple 9# powerful sets in there along with a better jackpot shot. Here's how we do it . . .

01-02-03-04-05-06
01-02-03-07-08-09
01-02-03-10-11-12
01-02-03-13-14-15
04-05-06-07-08-09
04-05-06-10-11-12
04-05-06-13-14-15
07-08-09-10-11-12
07-08-09-13-14-15
10-11-12-13-14-15

There you have it, 3if6in15 numbers 10 lines. If you were wondering, it takes 120 lines for a Jackpot Shot using 48 numbers in groups of three.

Arrrrrgh the times when none of the winning numbers fall among your 12 are the worst so take out some insurance.

The only way to have ALL the winning numbers among those you are playing is to play them all or almost all.

Say we have a 6/49 game and we're playing 12 numbers on 6 lines leaving 37 numbers. Most games generally have one dead number that has not been drawn for 30 or more draws, we don't play that one and do play the remaining 36 on 6 well constructed lines.

What's that you say, 6 plus 6 is 12 and that's hardly a shoe string any more? Later I'll show you how to buy 12 lines for less then six dollars.

When making our lines we shouldn't include more then:

Five of the Six numbers being all odd or even.

Five or the Six numbers being all low or high.

Three of the numbers being in numeric sequence.

Three of the numbers being in any sequence.

Three of the numbers being from one decade.

Three of the numbers having the same last digit.

Two of the numbers from the previous draw.

In other words, 05-10-15-20-25-30-35 passes the no all odd or all even criteria and passes with no more then five odd or even numbers and decades, but fails due to six numbers in sequence. Getting this right won't make you a winner, but it will help prevent you from playing combinations of a type that only come up once every hundred or so drawings.

The world's best pattern identifier remains the human brain. Our brains are hard wired to search for patterns ever since the need to spot a camouflaged critter among the foliage.

The numbers you use for your sets of three should come from your study of the recent draws. This won't be worth much at first until you knuckle down and really look at what's been happening and guess what will come next.

Ignore all the worthless formulas for picking numbers you've been told. Pick your numbers based on gut feel. After each draw study where you went wrong and strive to do better next time. Soon you will be winning more then you lose.

If you simply can't pick numbers to save your life even after really working at it, here are some ideas.

Begin by selecting a range of past history to use for each draw. I would suggest either the last 10 draws, or use as many draws as there are past numbers. i.e.: 6/49 game use 49 past draws so each number had a chance to be drawn an even number of times.

Write out the number of numbers in your game and for each time a number has been drawn make a mark. Soon you will have a working chart showing the numbers ranging from (cough) hot to average to cold.

If you were to save these charts week after week and highlight the numbers that won, you would quickly learn all the winning numbers don't come from all hot, or all cold, or even hot and cold combined. It is extremely rare for all the winning numbers to come from one temperature.

What you would find is zero, one or two winning numbers coming from hot. Two, three or four winning numbers coming from average. And zero, one or two winning numbers coming from cold.

For your 12 numbers you'd want to pick 3 hot, 5 average 2 due and 2 cold. Of course you will adjust this as you learn what works for your particular game.

Separating Cold from Dead numbers. As you are marking off the numbers each time they are drawn, note the point where you have 24 numbers left that haven't hit and write them down. Continue checking off numbers until you have none left. Those numbers with no hits at all are dead, the ones with few hits are cold and those on your short list with hits after you noted them being among the 24 without hits at the time are "longest out since last hit" or "due".

Making up your remaining lines to put all the numbers into play try for a good blend of these temperatures of numbers in accordance with the rules above for how many of a type of number to allow in a combination.

If you get really stuck trying to work this all out and feel it would be easier to generate sets of lines using all the numbers to select from them a set that "looks good" I have recently come across a software called Lottery Cracker World that will do this for all Pick-5 and Pick-6 games the same as Lottery Cracker 2 does for the UK 6/49. The program is now free and does include a routine (Full Selection) to generate controled sets of lines that contain all the numbers. Grab a copy while it's free! Lottery Cracker

These are the registration codes. When you read the description of the software and click on order get registration you are taken to a page where it explains the software is now free use the codes below. There are also other software that is both free and paid you can check out.

Lottery Cracker AE = 22566F

Lottery Cracker World = D1002E

Lottery Cracker Source Code = G20058F

On a side note: A little number magic occurs when you play all or almost all the lottery numbers on a minimum number of lines.

The people buying ten quick picks in line ahead and behind you are playing ten tickets in a 6/49 game or worse. When you play, because the 6 winning numbers have nowhere to drop except onto 6 or fewer of your lines, you've effectively reduced the game from 6/49 to 6/36 !!!

Has your lottery game changed for the worse? If your lottery has switched to computerized drawings, increased the size of the game (Florida 6/49 to 6/53), raised the price of a play to $2.00 and won't let you save gas by playing online, fire them and try a better game.

The best are the Australian lotteries because the online ticket seller is licensed and regulated by the Australian government.

For those with a shoe string to play on the Monday draw is a dream lottery. Tax free in Australia for a nice vacation or retirement, you only pay taxes on what you bring into the U.S. The prize is one million dollars Au. and if the jackpot isn't won is rolled down to double the lower tier prizes. The game is 6/45 the odds of a jackpot 1 in 8.1 million and this being two tickets for a dollar ($.43 U.S.) cuts those odds right in half. Plus they draw two supplemental balls or bonus balls where if you get five numbers right plus the bonus ball the five number prize is greatly improved.

Please don't take my word for any of this. Visit OzLotteries and read all about it. You can register for free and they give you $1.00 Au. to play with so you can see how playing online is easier then marking play slips at home.

Remember how playing 9 numbers reduced the 6/49 odds of having all 6 winning numbers among those you are playing from 1 in 13.9 million to 1 in 166,474.00 thousand and playing 12 numbers reduced the odds to 1 in 15,134.00? Well hang onto your hat.

Playing 9 numbers in a 6/45 game reduces the odds from 1 in 8.1 million to 1 in 96,965.00 thousand and being two tickets for a dollar cuts the odds per dollar played to 1 in 43,483.50 thousand.

Playing 12 numbers in a 6/45 game reduces the odds from 1 in 8.1 million to 1 in 8,815.00 thousand and being two tickets for a dollar cuts the odds per dollar played to 1 in 4,407.50 thousand.

What happens to these odds when you play two dollars, or four dollars or eight dollars?

Think about it. A million dollar lottery at odds less then half of winning Pick-4. I ask you, where can you play a legitimate lottery for less, with better odds of winning a jackpot?

If your lottery is sucking you dry without rewarding you on a regular basis, you're playing a sucker's game. Cut back your expensive play to three, six, twelve dollars, or use the oz lotteries to cut that in half and you'll come out a winner whether you hit a jackpot or not.

Of course all the usual caveats and warnings apply. Don't be an idiot and blow all your money on lottery tickets. Don't blame me if you lose, buy me a beer when you win. If you have a gambling disease where you are only happy when you lose this isn't for you. Anything I forgot, consider it said.

Good luck to you. Robert Perkis