The Lottery

11 September 2021

By John Marchel

The Lottery is a very old form of gambling. Lotteries became the US government standard method of raising funds for public works and higher educational institutions like Yale and Harvard.

Today, half of the states (including Washington DC, American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) have lotteries and over 50 countries around the world also have them. The odds are exceptionally high, but the cost of a ticket is extremely low, that is why a lot of people play it.

Lotteries have the worst odds of any gambling game with a chance of approximately 1 in 14 million. (the Powerball odds can be as high as 1 in 292 million). No other gambling game approaches this high house odds. The three most common lottery games are: 1) Instant Scratch Off, 2) Daily Number and 3) Weekly Super Jackpot Game.

The objective of playing the lottery is the player to select a combination of numbers or symbols that match those selected, through a random process, normally by the governing agency. Each governing agency, at least in the US, selects the total amount of numbers to be use in its various games. To win the grand prize in a typical lotto game, you must buy a ticket and correctly match the six numbers drawn randomly from, say, forty-nine numbers, (This is called a 6/49 game, a commonly popular game).

Some Lottery tips:

• The first tip deals with game selection. You should choose to play the lottery game with the lowest odds, that means the game with the smallest amount of numbers. Many states have various lottery games, ones with high jackpots and very high odds, and ones with a smaller numbers. The games like Pick-3, Daily-4 or Fantasy-5, which have only three, four or five numbers to choose from have much better odds for the player.

• Number selection involves choosing lottery numbers which have the best chance of being drawn. Most people would not bet on a horse without first studying its record. This is called handicapping which is the study of what has happen in the past can have an effort on the future. With the lottery you analyze past numbers to help determine which numbers have the greatest probability of being drawn. Even though the numbers are randomly drawn. randomly drawn numbers are known to form patterns that are predictable.

• The basis of lottery strategy is to play the probabilities. To play that which is most likely to happen. If something rarely happens in lottery drawings, (like a winning ticket with 1,2,3,4,5,6 on it) or if something has never happened before in the history of the lottery, common sense tells you not to expect it to happen just because you bet on it.

• Many people play a number because they think it's "due." They have the mistaken notion that in Lotto, everything has to even out. That simply is not true. During one period in the New York lottery, number 45 did not show up in 100 drawings.

• Picking numbers from birth dates or anniversaries starts you out with a disadvantaged for winning a game. This is because the month and day birthday numbers are limited to the digits 1 to 12 and 1 to 31. Your selections exclude the numbers above 32 and bias your ability to hit in over one third of lottery numbers available.

• Try and spread your sections evenly between high and low numbers. This will statistically balance your entry.

• When playing a given set of numbers that you have played for a long time, stick with them. Patience is known to pay off. Be sure you review past results to ensure your numbers didn’t come up some time in the past when you were away and didn’t play.

• There are a lot of computer products on the market with claims that cannot be relied on. No lottery analysis software can predict exactly what lottery numbers will be drawn in the next game. They will pick numbers for you but so will the lottery machine itself. They are fun, but don’t bet on them.

• You want to make sure you immediately sign the winning lottery ticket. Lottery tickets are "bearer" instruments. This means that whoever holds the ticket is the winner. If you lose the ticket anybody who presents the ticket is rewarded the prize.


BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

• The first recorded lottery took place in L’Ecluse, Burgundy in 1420.

• Thomas Jefferson, president of the US, was considered a real renaissance man; however, he didn’t know how to manage money. After he left the presidency his debts piled up so high, he convinced the state of Virginia to pass a special law allowing him to hold a lottery to raise money. Few people brought tickets, but friends secretly raised funds to help the former president with his debts.

• The “poolroom” originally was a place in which lottery tickets were sold. Since tickets were sold all day, but the drawings were not held until late in the evening, proprietors of those faculties began to install billiard and pool tables to occupy customers during the long waiting periods.

• Benjamin Franklin used lotteries to help finance the purchase of cannons for the Revolutionary War.

• Lottery revenue in Michigan and California pays for just about three to five percent of their education budgets.

• In 1991, The California Lottery had actually become the largest purchaser of advertising in Los Angeles County.

• In 1861 when Kansas was admitted to the Union, their constitution stated, “Lotteries and the sale of lottery tickets are forever prohibited. After 125 years, in 1986, a majority of voters approved an amendment to the constitution, after a statewide referendum, authorizing the legislature to provide for a “state-owned and operated lottery.

• Joseph J. Hornick Sr., a 67-year-old resident of Beaver Meadows, Carbon County, has won four Pennsylvania Lottery jackpot prizes over a 12-year period, the latest two, in 2001, came within three-and-one-half weeks of each other.

• In early 2016 we saw the biggest lottery ever. The jackpot reached $1.586 billion. It’s the only jackpot to ever reach the billion-dollar mark. Three people won the prize on January 13th.

• The most common winning Mega-Ball number is 10.