Do you use a system for choosing your lottery numbers? If because of this, are you aware that using such a system might actually reduce your prospects of landing a big win? The only way to genuinely improve your prospects of winning the lottery is to buy more entries – and don’t let anyone tell you differently, it’s just a matter of statistics. Alternatively, there are actually some steps you can take to ensure that, in the event that you do win, you are more likely to win a larger total amount. Let’s use the UK lottery being an example. Every week that there is a jackpot winner it appears that the prize is shared among a number of people. As such, the easiest way to maximise your winnings within the event that the numbers are chosen is to minimise the number of individuals it is important to share the prize money with. Although there are actually no guarantees in a game of chance such as a lottery, you can find several ways in which this might be done.

First of all, it’s surprising how lots of people use dates to select their numbers. It makes it easier for them to remember if they want to play the same numbers every week and they could also attach feelings of good luck to certain dates, for example birthdays, anniversaries etc. This means the “date numbers”, 1 to 31, are picked more frequently. So make sure that you have at least 2 or 3 numbers outside of this range.

Do not pick numbers which have recently been drawn. Lots of individuals believe in “hot streaks” and can be selecting these.

Don’t pick numbers based on an arithmetic sequence e.g. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24. This is an extremely common practice and also you may wind up sharing your jackpot with a lot of mathematics teachers!

Do not pick numbers which form a pattern on the entry slip, e.g. a cross or a box. Again this technique might be more commonly used than you may imagine and you might have to express your prize with a whole lot of people.

Do not use a tips service to select your numbers. It doesn’t matter regardless of if the service is based upon some advanced statistical analysis, the total amount of ink on each ball or the dream visions of some spaced out hippy, you will not be the only person using it and so you certainly will be guaranteed to find yourself splitting your winnings with a whole bunch of other winners.

The best way to pick your numbers will be at random. You can draw them out of a hat or use one of a range of random generators that are available online for just that purpose. This won’t improve your probability of winning – but at least in the event you do win you are going to be a lot less prone to have to express your loot with a couple of dozen other “lucky” punters.