There is so much lottery junk online. Not just systems, but bad advice and poor information everywhere.

Just dare to ask what works in an online forum, you’ll get ten ‘experts’ swearing on their mother’s life that asking Felix the psyhic feline is the only way to win.

Then another ten who say system ‘x’ works because they never won a thing before, until they started playing using system ‘x’ and matched 3 out of 6 on the first try… whilst neglecting to tell you that they bought 20 times more tickets than they ever did before.

Results Mean Nothing

The thing is that individual results do not mean anything.

I know that sounds a bit backwards. But because the lottery is random, and so very hard to win – isolated results one way or the other do not mean anything useful.

You Need See The Big Picture

Here’s a good example why:

Take Gail Howards wheeling books – some of the oldest lottery systems online. The smartluck.com website hasn’t been run by Gail for a long time and now includes a fair amount of factually incorrect advice.

But the site is full of testimonials of people who have won jackpots. And they are real winners too. So the system must work then, right..?

Well, not exactly.

These people have NOT won because of any secret system. They won because 100,000 Gail Howard fans have been buying lots of tickets for 30 years (yes, over 30 years!).

And because they were told to play games that are easier to win (i.e. Pick 5).

What About The 99.9% Who Lost!

So what happened to the other 99,900 people who bought Gail’s books but haven’t won..?

Did they not bother to use it? Did they not implement the clever techniques properly? Or were they just unlucky.

How can they claim these are lottery systems that work if the vast majority do not win when they use them?

Smart Luck Or Plain Random Luck

If you use any system and win big, it just means you were lucky.

Now if everyone who used a system won big within, let’s be generous here and say 10 years, that would really mean something.

But it can never happen, because the lottery just doesn’t work in any way that can be ‘beaten’. It really is random and every combination is just as likely. One of the worlds best maths Professors (a real one!) actually stated this in a newspaper yesterday.

A better chance of winning is the best that you can expect from any system. And that is worth pursuing.

So Are There Any Lottery Systems That Work?

It really depends on what you mean by ‘work’, and exactly what those lottery systems claim to do.

So when I assess and test lottery systems, I’m looking at the value of the insights and strategies that they offer. But I’m also looking at what they claim they can do for you, and if they are making innaccurate claims or giving bad advice.

Testing does not mean using them for a week or two and drawing unhelpful conclusions!

So when you read my lottery system reviews, bear in mind that anything I do recommend has value.

Because I’m one of the very few voices online that won’t recommend lottery garbage for a sly backhander.

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Seriously, we’re talking gaping mouthed amazement when the Florida Fantasy 5 results came on screen.

14, 15, 16, 17, 18

A complete set of consecutive numbers.

That’s just totally impossible. What an incredible result. The game is clearly fixed… and other such nonsense could be heard from every direction.

The odd ‘lone voice in the room’ all across the State could be heard quietly trying to explain that this is honestly nothing significant in any way, shape or form. But nobody was listening. Because it’s more exciting to see something that isn’t really there.

Just like the same lottery numbers twice outrage back in 2009.

I know it looks like something really crazy just happened. But folks, it’s just our crazy perception (see repeat lottery numbers). There are 32 sets of consecutive numbers in a 5/36 lottery game. All of which are as unlikely to come out as the non-consecutive ones.

At best there are only a few hundred combinations that look exciting.

So it’s really not surprising when the 376,000 ‘boring’ combinations appear most of the time. We don’t see a pattern, it’s not memorable, so we don’t jump and down getting excited about it.

The Important Take Home Bit

Look more closely at the results though, and you’ll discover that 47 people picked those consecutive numbers.

Now normally only 1 or 2 people would win the jackpot on the Fantasy 5, and win a payout of a couple of hundred thousand.

Those 47 people who all thought they were clever picking consecutive numbers all now have to share. So they each win a very disappointing $4,581.

Don’t pick numbers according to any pattern. Because no matter how clever you think the pattern is, lots of other people do too.

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2. Repeat Lottery Numbers In Bulgaria!
3. Why Playing The ‘Lost’ Lottery Numbers Is Actually Really Dumb

Enthusiastic ‘Lost’ fans who played the numbers collected $150 each.

The ‘Lost’ numbers are a set of numbers made significant by cropping up in various guises throughout the series. But most significantly appearing in an episode called ‘Numbers’ in the 1st season of the show back in 2005. The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 win a jackpot in a flashback sequence for character Hurley.

Now the problem is that ‘Lost’ was hugely popular. That one episode alone was seen when broadcast by 18.8 million people in the US alone.

So it should come as no real surprise to find more than 25,587 people won the $150 prize in that draw.

Now, not all of those people necessarily played the ‘Lost’ numbers but given that a 3+1 match on Mega Millions typically pays out around 3,000 people – it seems there’s a lot of dumb people out there!

Why?

Because if the ‘Lost’ numbers ever hit the jackpot, you can expect to be sharing the prize with around 20,000 other ‘lucky’ winners.

On the other hand, those with a little more originality shared the jackpot of $380 Million… between the two of them!

The ‘Lost’ obsessives would be looking at a life changing sum of around $19,000 each.

Change your numbers guys!

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[A] There are lots of interesting things you can do with old lottery results. You can apply all sorts of analysis on past results, and come up with lots of intriguing things.

Even the lottery companies do it themselves. Many official lottery sites have things like lottery frequency checker tools on them, so you can see how often each ball has been drawn.

But the problem with this kind of analysis, is that it’s entirely useless in predicting what’s going to happen next.

Here’s why…

Lottery Randomness Looks Weird

I know this sounds a bit Douglas Adams but the big problem with randomness is that it can often look so very unrandom.

For something to be truly random, all results have to be possible.

So for there to be any significance in some numbers appearing more often than others, there must by definition be something wrong with the draw process. In others words it isn’t random.

Yes, that’s theoretically possible – but bear in mind lottery companies put an awful lot of effort into ensuring their draws are random.

By all means fire up your Excel spreadsheet, plug in all the past results, and make charts of hit frequency. If you find that kind of stuff fun.

(No offence intended – I’m a maths and probability geek!)

But please don’t be fooled into thinking this kind of analysis will increase your chances of winning the lottery.

It won’t do your chances of winning any harm to play this way, it just won’t improve them any either.

For more help with winning and real stuff you can do to improve your odds, get my free lottery tips course.

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1. Picking Lottery Numbers – Myth 1

Every day I see another crazy claim about how certain results can never happen on the lottery. Or how you can avoid unlikely combinations, and other such total rubbish.

Well stick this story in your pipe and smoke it all you sellers of those crazy lottery systems!

Same Six Numbers Two Lottery Draws In A Row

On 6th September the numbers 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 were drawn on the Bulgaria lottery.

Then, the very next draw on 10th September exactly the same numbers were drawn again!

Eeeek! Impossible craziness right?

But the draw was live on Bulgarian TV. And it wasn’t one of those computer based draws, it was a normal lottery draw machine with balls tumbling around in a drum.

So did Derrren Brown fix the result? Is it some mass conspiracy to undermine trust in the Bulgarian lottery? Have aliens landed and taken over Bulgaria?

No. No. And probably not.

So How Can This Happen?

Let’s flip the question and look at it this way.

If it was impossible for the previous numbers to be drawn again, would that be a truly random lottery draw? If number 4 was less likely to come out because it appeared last time, would that really be random?

Think carefully here.

Randomness can look very odd sometimes. Especially to our highly ordered, pattern loving brains.

The truth is that it’s perfectly normal for things like this to happen when something is totally random.

It is theoretically possible there is something very wrong with the set of balls used. But a lot of checks and measures would have to fail for that to be the case.

Yes, Svilen  Neykov (Sports Minister) was right to order a review. But don’t be at all surprised to find the review finds nothing at all out of the ordinary.

What Can We Take Away From This?

If you look hard enough for patterns in past results, you will find them. But analysing past results will not help you predict lottery numbers.

(If you enjoy analysing lottery results and playing around with spreadsheets, that’s cool with me. I quite like a spreadsheet myself. But please try and avoid jumping to the wrong conclusion and making claims that simply aren’t true.)

UPDATE: The commission concluded their investigation and found no evidence of fraud or manipulation, and no wrongdoing. Surprise!

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When picking lottery numbers you should NEVER pick the numbers that were drawn last week, because there is no chance they will be drawn this week…

Fact

Last weeks numbers still have EXACTLY the same chance of being drawn as every other combination! (Crazy huh)

Reason

I know it sounds logical at first. Who ever heard of the same numbers being picked twice in a row? Never happened right?

But the reality is it could happen.

Yeah, OK, so it could – but it’s still far less likely than other numbers, right..?

No!

It’s EXACTLY as likely as all the other numbers. Or to put it another way, it’s exactly as UNlikely as all the other possible results.

(Because all combinations are unlikely anyway. That’s the nature of a lottery, there are millions of combinations. So everything is unlikely.)

We Did WHAT Last Week..?!

You see there is no ‘memory effect’ here.

Those little balls have no brains, so they don’t know what happened last week. They just bounce around and pop out again without the slightest idea of what last weeks numbers were.

Don’t Believe The Hype

This myth is exactly the sort of thing those junk lottery systems use to take your money.

We’ll eliminate all those nasty unlikely combinations so you get a better chance of winning…

It’s a nice claim. But sadly it just isn’t true.

So when it comes to picking lottery numbers, excluding past results will NOT help your chances of winning. Right?

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2. Are Winning Lottery Numbers Repeated?
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Just today I came across another ‘system’ teaching people to predict lottery numbers by using ‘lottery sums’. What do they mean by using sums for the lottery?

In a nutshell the expert idiot writer meant adding up groups of past numbers, and making silly conclusions about them…

You sum (or ‘add’) the first two numbers, then the second and third groups of two numbers. Then you look at what range the sum totals fall into, and lo and behold based on the last 87 years results from the Albanian Mega-Super-De-Dooper Lotto… there is a pattern..!

Here’s why lottery sums are so dumb:-

1. If you apply completely made up calculations with no logic behind them to sets of numbers in a fixed range – there will always be patterns, because the numbers are in a fixed range!
2. It’s like looking at clouds and making faces, except cloud pictures are fun and not totally dumb…
3. Past results!? What the heck have past results got to do with it anyway. Are you really claiming that the little balls have a life of their own and remember what happened before?
4. Just because they try and use complicated sounding maths terms like ‘standard deviation’ does NOT make them clever or right!
5. It’s like saying ‘pick only numbers between x and y because 70% of the past results are in that range’ – yeah, great, that’s because 70%  of any possible result is in that range too! What about the other 30%!?

Of course this kind of dumb analysis makes absolutely no difference at all to your chances of winning. Thankfully it can’t make your chances any worse, but I guarantee it will NOT improve them either.

Hey, I just saw a cute little dog face in last nights lottery results…

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Whilst designer clothing is not at the top of the pairs shopping list, they plan to pay off their mortgages and give money to the eight children they have between them.

But they both plan to continue working at their jobs with Dungeness Power Station in Kent. “Nobody at work knew we were naturists…” said Brian. I have I feeling the secret is probably out now..!

The couple played just three lines a week, mostly made up from family birthdays. Of course playing birthdays is not going to give you a better chance of winning as the wise players here will know. But it does give you a reason to adjust the way you play – unless you want to share your jackpot with lots of other lottery winners it makes sense not to play too many birthdate numbers.

What do you think? How many birthday numbers (1-31) do you play in a line? How many birthdate numbers in a line would it take before you rejected a randomly generated entry? Add your comments below.

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George W. Bush often uses the phrase “like totally”. No, like he does, like totally!

Surely this annoying phrase is only used by teenagers, isn’t it?

Well actually a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, Mark Liberman, found that “like totally” is widely used by men and women of all ages. And incredibly middle-aged men use it most. So say what you like about GW, he isn’t cool, or even trying this time .

This belief that if something feels new to us then it must be new to everybody else too, is actually known as the infrequency illusion. We have a natural tendency to overestimate our own personal experience and not step back and look at the big picture.

This is why the less wise lottery player often convinces themself that they have discovered a significant secret to beating the lottery.

Here’s what I mean.

Take wheeling systems. And especially wheeling systems sold by people who like to use lots of testimonials to prove how effective their ‘systems’ are (whilst being careful not to make any claims they would have to legally substantiate…).

The conclusion the buyer is supposed to reach is that wheeling improves your chances of winning because look at all the people who have won using it. The reality of course should include looking at the much larger group of people who have not won whilst using the same system.

Another example.

It’s quite common to hear people say:

“don’t play consecutive numbers such as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – they will never win”.

But step back and look at the bigger picture and you’ll find plenty of other combinations that have never won either. That’s because it takes a lot of draws to average out a jackpot win for each of 10′s of millions of possible results.

Even the longest running lottery in the world (yes, the Netherlands!) has had less than 15,000 draws. And most lotteries have had less than a few thousand draws!

But of course, those other results that have never won don’t get mentioned, because the numbers are not as visually pleasing to the eye.

So next time you see something that looks significant about the lottery results, step back a moment and consider if it only looks significant because you don’t have enough information. Because maybe the infrequency illusion has just paid you a visit.

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[If you want to know more about how Derren does his crazy mind voodoo check out this video]

I did but then I’m used to spotting such things as the same trick is used by lottery system sellers.

What Derren did was take a woman at random and feed her horse racing predictions. She was aware that she was part of an experiment, and that ‘The System’ was supposed to be a way to guarantee picking winners every time at horse racing.

For the first race she was given a winner and told to just watch the race. Once the predicted winner rode home her confidence was visibly boosted. The next race her own money was at risk. To her great excitement, she won again. A third and fourth time turned her into a firm believer that The System was real, and completely proven. After all, four winners out of four races, what are the chances of that?

Derren Brown – The System Explained

For the fifth race, our lucky winner got to meet the creator of The System. And here’s where Derren revealed to her how it all worked. No, he wasn’t psychic or the discoverer of some mathematical miracle. Neither was he plain lucky or working with secret stable insider information. It was simply a con. A well carried out con.

Her perception was that The System worked because she won every race. But this was only her perception, and that of the viewer with the information revealed so far.

The reality however was very different. Because she was not the only person in the experiment. In fact, thousands of people all believed they were the only one!

Derren had simply covered every possible outcome. The thousands of people who had been allocated the losing horses in race one were simply thrown out with apologies, while all those given the horse that won moved on to race 2. Then Derren simply split them down again between all the horses running, and again only kept those that it turned out had been given the horse that won.

Repeated over race three and four, there was just one very happy woman remaining – and thousands of not so happy people who knew The System did NOT work as promised.

So How Does This Relate To Lottery Systems?

It’s in the promise, and the perception of reality. The promise is that the lottery system can help you pick winning numbers. The perception is that it works – read those testimonials!

It’s quite possible those testimonials are entirely real, but the reality is they come from a very distorted perception. Because if you con enough people into using your lottery system then some are definitely going to win – not because your system works, but simply because you cover all the outcomes!

[NOTE ABOUT SYSTEMS: When I refer to 'lottery system', I mean a piece of software, book or website that claims to help you pick combinations of numbers that are more likely to win, be that through analysing past results or eliminating 'unlikely' results, i.e. misguided rubbish and lies. I don't mean multiple entries by wheeling numbers or using a lottery syndicate or pooled entries.]

Now the likely reality here is that system sellers don’t actually manage to con enough people to cover all the outcomes. But it doesn’t matter because they have this covered too – nobody is thrown out when they lose. All they have to do is say stick with it, the system does work, try again next week.

A lucky winner doesn’t ultimately care if they win a lot of money on week 1 or week 101, their perception is they won. The reality is they won due to random chance only, as the thousands of people who lost using the same system should realise.

So the next time you are promised lottery numbers that have a better chance of winning, think about what perception of reality you’re actually being sold.

And if you’d like to know more your chances of winning the lottery, and the facts about what you can do to increase your chances please get my free lottery tips.

So what did you think of Derren’s new one-off special? Did you guess early what was going on?

P.S. Want to know more Derren Brown secrets? And how he does those crazy mind voodoo tricks check out this video.

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