Should I Play The Same Lottery Numbers In Every Draw?

Man walking over lottery numbers

This is one of those lottery questions that can make your head spin. Should I play the same lottery numbers or change them? It can turn your brain inside out if you overthink it…

If my numbers haven’t come up yet, surely they are more likely to in future?

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Should I Play The Same Lottery Numbers In Every Draw?

149 Comments so far ↓

  • Corne Botha

    You lose patience if you keep the same lottery numbers. Example, I gave up in 2 years time of the same quick pick, than suddenly 5 numbers came up in the third year, that strategy does work, but you must keep patience, even after 5 years.

  • Manny

    I have purchased ten lottery plays every draw. And used the same numbers since 2009. The odds are in favor of the game. I have only hit 4 out of six once and got a measly 73 dollars. Hit 3 out of six plenty of times. But I might play forever without any results. Luckily I have the spare change to play but the ODDS are in favor of the game.

  • Dave

    I played the same play 3 numbers (689) for 3 years and never missed a day then on July 4th the Third year I didn’t play as I thought they didn’t pick on that Holiday and 689 came in straight.
    I quit playing any lottery games right there !

    • LG

      That’s some bad luck Dave, I feel for you!

      It’s one decent reason not to stick to the same numbers all the time, and simply use random picks. Lottery companies like us to have combinations we are religiously/superstitiously attached to, because it makes us play more often (‘you can’t miss a draw or your numbers might come up’). In reality they are only ‘our numbers’ when we play them. But I know it’s hard to ignore what could have been.

      If it’s any consulation – Pick 3 is a not a good game choice anyway, so you’re better off leaving that one behind 🙂

  • Daniel Dominguez

    You guys should play twice in every draw, one your same repeated numbers and the second one a random selection.

  • Daniel Dominguez

    Also I have discovered a list of how many times each number has been drawn, the times some of the numbers have been drawn is greater then others.

    If it was only balls floating in a draw machine and they all have the same chance to come out, how is it that some balls have been drawn tens or more times then others that have never come out? Some of them could be lighter in weight.

    • LG

      Hi Daniel

      Random can (and should!) do things that look unusual to us sometimes. If it was totally impossible to roll a 6 ten times in a row on a dice then there would be something wrong with that dice. It’s very unlikely, but not impossible.

      That said, ‘bias’ in the balls or the draw machine is very much a possibility – albeit one that the lottery company are also very aware of too – there’s more discussion on this in the post here.

  • Stuart

    I have been playing the lotto for just over 2 years playing the same numbers every time and I recently got 5 straight numbers for $1,600! So your numbers really can come out, it’s just a matter of covering all the numbers and having an even mixture of odd and even numbers. Good luck. Cheers regards Stewy Dalby City Kent UK

    • LG

      Congrats on your win Stuart. May the next one be even bigger 🙂

      An even mix of odd/even doesn’t actually make any difference to your chances of winning though. That’s a myth. You don’t get anything for matching patterns – just the actual numbers drawn.

  • Miguel

    Hi LG,
    What odds should you have to play with some hope?
    My current odds are 1 in 339.000 (24 games in a 6/45 lotto). Are they still extremely high?
    I play this lotto once a week, should I play 100 games once a month instead? My odds would be 1 in 81.450 (few syndicates have better odds). The only problem: the fun factor, playing once a month is less exciting 🙁

    • LG

      Even 1 ticket in the US Powerball or Italy’s SuperEnalotto (both games with extremely tough odds) have some hope. Just not very much.

      The fun factor is definitely important. You can’t play these games expecting to win so it should be something you also enjoy. I get into some of this in my tips here.

  • Raivis

    To sell any strategy or way to pick your numbers to incease your chances doesn’t make any sense if we take your comments into account. So you are saying that your chances are always the same, than how can you encrease your chance 🙂

    • LG

      Hi Raivis

      Well, mainly because there’s a LOT more to Strategy than just picking numbers. So much more, but most people just overlook all that.

      Fundamentally this post was about the theory that playing the same numbers increases your chances over time. Which it doesn’t. The odds don’t change.

      But it possible for bias to exist in any mechanical system, but that’s a whole other story and overcomplicates the question 🙂

      • Raivis

        Thanks buddy appreciate your answer but still odds don’t change no matter what strategy you play or you play quick pick, doesn’t make sense to study any strategy because odds are the same, that is actually what you saying yourself bud, Cheers.

      • LG

        Hi Raivis

        Get my free stuff from here, you’ll see what I mean 🙂

  • Robert Howell

    This is what we did, we went to the lottery web site, picked the numbers that came up the most often, and placed those numbers on our lotto ticket each week.
    I may be wrong but if every time you play the lotto using different numbers your odds on winning will be the same each time you play.
    However if you use the same number repeatedly, each time your numbers are not called, the next time there’s a little better chance one of them maybe called.
    I say using your same numbers that did not win, improves your odds on winning later with those same numbers.
    That’s the odds.

    • LG

      Hey Robert,

      Not really. If you think of it like flipping a coin – there’s a 50/50 chance of heads or tails. If you pick tails, and heads comes up, then it’s still 50/50 on the next flip. So even if heads comes up 3 times in a row (or 10 times), your chances of being right on the next flip are still the same.

      There is one caveat here though. We’re assuming a perfectly random coin flip, which is hard to do, so you may have a little better chance with one than the other – but only because of this ‘bias’, not because of what has or hasn’t happened on previous flips. And of course, the same applies to the lottery here too, except they have experts trying to ensure the draw is ‘properly random’. There’s a whole debate about what random is and what you can do about bias, but it’s a big topic (my Strategy Group covers it in much greater detail than I can here).

    • Tommy

      No. Every drawing is random. What if the same numbers were drawn two weeks in a row? If a combination of numbers were never used twice, then choosing the same numbers every drawing would make sense.

  • Daniel M

    I disagree with both of you, is a million ways to lose, all you have to do is win once, play the numbers without fail, it’s only a matter of time.

    • LG

      You’re perfectly entitled to disagree, but you’d still be wrong :-).

      But why not test it for yourself. Use a coin or a dice, run trials, and compare how often you guess correct based on tests of changing and not changing your selection.

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