Maybe after reading this, it could increase your chances of winning the lottery!
Ryan Garibaldi, a California mathematician, shared the different tactics to increasing one’s chances of taking home the big prize — but he also reveals the common mistake players make that could lead to their misfortune.
“You’re not gonna increase your chances of winning by some strategy about how you pick the exact numbers you pick,” Garibaldi told WIRED.
The mathematician revealed many lotto players choose a full column of numbers on the tickets or have this “strategy” of picking certain numbers – both big no-nos.
The director for Center of Communications Research in La Jolla, Calif., Garibaldi explained that if you win the jackpot, you want to be the only one to win it and not split it — advising players to pick unpopular numbers when choosing.
Garibaldi advised that picking sequential numbers could be the route that helps players’ chances, though he joked saying it won’t actually “increase your odds of winning.”
“So many sequential numbers help you not share the jackpot, which is good.”
Florida man Richard Lustig won the lottery 4 times in his hometown for $1,038,499.92 by picking sequential numbers.
In Lustig’s book, ” Learn How to Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lottery”, ranked #3 on Amazon’s self-help book list in 2013, he breaks down his sequential-numbers method that can be used for any type of lottery game (scratch-off tickets or number games) in any country or state.
Lustig also re-invested his lottery earnings back into the lottery to buy more tickets — using his “golden sequential” strategy.
Another method Garibaldi revealed for hitting the lottery was to pick numbers in the four-digit, six-way box scheme.
“You’re gonna bet on a four-digit number with repeated digits, like 1122, or 1212, and if you bet a six-way box, it bets all the six possible ways of writing a number with two ones in it and two twos in it,” he shared.
“And if you do that, your odds of winning are 1/1667, and in most states if you hit that, if you win that bet, you will win $800 which means you gotta go to a lottery office.”
Garibaldi said it isn’t a recipe for making money but it’s a recipe for “getting to that lottery office with the least amount of effort.”
The expert also noted that choosing tickets in the states that sell the fewest could help a player out as well.