What To Avoid
Numbers NOT To Select When Playing Lotto

According to Lottery expert Gail Howard, Lotto players who select their numbers thoughtlessly or foolishly are destined to lose even before the Draw takes place. By just knowing which number combinations and patterns to avoid, you'll have an advantage over other players--and save money, too.

1. AVOID COMBINATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN DRAWN BEFORE Many players like to bet the same set of numbers that have won someone else a big Jackpot. By doing so, they're almost guaranteed not to win one themselves. Even in the lowest odds 6 out of 25 Lotto game, the same set of six numbers has a chance of being drawn only once every 3, 405 years! It's practically impossible for the exact same set of six numbers to hit the Jackpot twice.

2. AVOID BETTING SIX CONSECUTIVE NUMBERS Six consecutive numbers (11-12-13-14-15-16, for example) have never been drawn in any state or international Lotto game. Even five consecutive numbers is a very rare occurrence. In most Lotto games, it has never happened even once.

3. AVOID BETTING ONE NUMBER GROUP Never choose all six numbers from one number group, such as all single digits, all teens, or all 20's. All six winning numbers being drawn from one number group is highly unlikely - since it has never happened before in any Lotto game.

4. AVOID THE COMBINATION 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 The most popular set of numbers most often played is: 1-2-3-4-5-6. Thousands of tickets are bought in each Lotto Draw with this combination. THIS TICKET IS GUARANTEED TO LOSE because the selection is too far out of balance to come up in a random drawing. The proof of this claim is verified by the Draw results in all the State and International Lottery games. If six consecutive numbers have never been drawn, and six numbers from one number group have never been drawn either, then what chance does the number combination 1-2-3-4-5-6 have? The least likely combinations to be drawn as winners are those at the tail ends of a bell curve. These are the lowest six numbers and the highest six numbers of any game.

Pattern betting is a very popular method of marking bet slips. Most Lotto bet slips look like this.     Patterns of numbers marked in a row to make a straight line (either across the bet slip or vertically or diagonally) are very common. Straight lines are so common, they were once played on more than 150,000 tickets --- for just one drawing! Other designs such as initials or numbers also get heavy play. If such numbers won, payouts would be very low.

6. AVOID NUMBER MULTIPLES Other popular combinations that get heavy play are the number multiples, especially 5-10-15-20-25-30. Such combinations have been played on at least 25,000 tickets in one drawing. If those numbers were to win a US$30 million jackpot, each winner would receive a single one-time payment of US$60.

7. AVOID ALL SAME LAST DIGITS Many people like to play same last digits, such as 3-13-23-33-43-53, or all the digits that end in seven, or some other favorite lucky number.    Even FOUR same last digits only appear in less than two tenths of one percent of all winnings. Winning sets of numbers with 3 digits with the same last number occur in less than 3% of all drawings. Winning sets of numbers with TWO same last digits occur in about 20% of all drawings.    Now, winning sets of numbers with NO same last digits-- that's what happens most often.

8. AVOID LOW NUMBER COMBINATIONS Majority of Lotto players like to play the calendar numbers, such as birth dates, anniversaries, and so on. This means that the most heavily played numbers are 1 through 31. Many Lotto games have 40 or more numbers - and numbers 32 and above do come out quite frequently. By ruling out non-calendar numbers, you significantly lessen your odds of winning a Jackpot. Even if your calendar numbers do hit, you'll probably have to share your First Prize Jackpot with several other winners. An incident like this happened on September 24, 1983, in the New York Lotto. The highest Lotto number drawn was 30, and there were 46 First Prize winners. If you've decided to try your hand at the different Lottery number selection systems, bear this in mind: the key to success is playing the probabilities.    If you play a pattern that occurs only five percent of the time, you can expect that pattern to lose 95 percent of the time.