Does Playing the Same Lottery Numbers Every Week Increase Your Chances of Winning the Jackpot?

Many of us have heard about a story of someone that played the exact same lottery numbers every week for years and years and then finally won the jackpot one day. To many of us, this would seem to mean that if you play the same numbers that it would increase your odds of winning. Is this true? Does playing the same lottery numbers every week increase your chances of winning the jackpot? This article explains the answer.

To get the answer, you must first understand how the lottery works. Numbers are drawn at random. Actually, it’s as close to random that you could get. And, since it is random, past results have absolutely no bearing on future results. That means that there is no such thing as a number or number combination being due to come up. That cannot happen with a system that is random.

Because the lottery is random, someone that buys a quick pick for any particular draw would have the same probability of winning the jackpot as someone who plays their regular numbers. There is no difference in odds - They each have the exact same odds. That means that playing the same numbers every week will not increase your chances - You would have the exact same chance of winning as someone who buys a quick pick every week.

The problem with people that think that playing the same numbers increases their odds of winning the jackpot is that they see patterns where there are none. For example, they might see a news story of a woman that played the same numbers for 25 years before finally winning the big one and figure that if it happened to her, it should happen to them too. What they don’t realize is that if, say, a million people play the same numbers every week, the law of large numbers would say that some of them will eventually win. Some people will win that way, but it does not mean that their system works or that it even increases their chances.

Check out the big money lottery winners blog. It has stories of big jackpot winners, like this Million Dollar Raffle winner from Rhode Island, USA.