Interesting point. There was a case in 2008 where ALC published one number wrong for the Bucko draw of 6th October 2008 – is that the one you’re thinking of? But in that case they honoured both sets of results, and asked any players who cashed in for a lower prize or who may have thrown tickets away to contact them so they could verify and correct it. Because of the detailed data they have from ticket purchases they knew it affected 3,849 tickets, and less than $10,000 total prize money.

All lottery companies obviously have a massive duty of care to ensure any results they publish are correct. So triple checks all the way should be standard. But I guess they can evaluate pretty fast the level of damage any incorrect results would cause, and tailor their response. So corrective action could seem inaqeduate when it may well be sufficient – it’s a fine line though, as every lottery company is entirely dependant on player trust.

That said, there are lots of independent publishers of lottery results – everyone from local papers to national TV and many news based websites. There are plenty of cases of wrong results being published by these sources, but of course they don’t have quite the same legal pressure to get it right. So I’d always recommend checking results from the official source before disposing of any tickets.

Whereas if you change then you’ll never know, and you’ll be much happier.

There’s no way of knowing for certain, but it’s wise to try and avoid picking numbers the same way as other people do. Lots of people pick ‘lucky numbers’, or using patterns and shapes on the playslip, or family birthdays etc.

When you look at how many people play the Lost lottery numbers, you’ll see what I mean.

It might mean you end up sharing the jackpot with lots of people if you do win though, so avoid picking too many. More on that in my lottery tips course.

And yah, I’ve tried betting on the same number a couple of times and when I missed, it went out! grrrr..