Powerball players, here’s one number you should never bet on — plus 10 ‘lucky’ digits to try instead
Considered to be bad news for centuries, experts are now confirming that the number 13 is a straight-up loser — when it comes to winning at Powerball, anyway.
The number crunchers at gaming site CSGOluck.com pored over more than 950 drawings between 2015 and 2023, analyzing the most commonly selected numbers in hopes of finding the luckiest — and unluckiest — digits for prospective players of the popular game.
In a list of the ten unwinningest numbers, 13 was the least commonly selected, with only 51 drawings in the last year, the Daily Mail reports.
And in the ten most frequently selected, the number 61 snags the top spot, having been drawn a whopping 90 times during the timeframe selected for the study.
Rong Chen, a statistics professor at Rutgers University, told the outlet that while some numbers may show up more often, that doesn’t mean there’s a higher likelihood of them being drawn again in the future.
“In theory and in practice, all combinations have equal probability of winning,” he told a reporter.
Not that there’s anything wrong with applying some basic strategy when it comes time to play, he said.
One approach, Dr. Chen said, is to choose numbers that are less likely to be selected by others — any number higher than 31, for example, means you’re picking something that isn’t a birth date, a popular choice with many players.
With more than 181 million Americans trying their luck each year, Powerball is far and away one of the country’s favorite ways to play the lotto.
The game has gained notoriety in recent years for its stonkingly huge jackpots — the largest on record being $2.04 billion, won by Californian Edwin Castro back in late 2022. The 31-year-old quickly gained notoriety for his lavish Los Angeles real estate purchases.
A hopeful player simply selects five numbers between 1 and 69, plus one Powerball number between 1 and 26.
Mark Glickman, a statistician teaching at Harvard, originally told CBS News: “Even though you cannot on a single drawing improve your chances, what you can do is invoke a strategy that actually increases your chance of not sharing your prize fund.”
“Rather than picking common numbers or patterns on tickets, what you should actually be doing is you should be taking random numbers,” he said.
“You should just completely have pattern-less random numbers, no birthdays that have special meaning to you, because other people are likely to make those same picks,” the professor suggested.
Looking for some help choosing the right random numbers? Here are the ten luckiest and unluckiest, according to the CSGOluck.com study.
The research also has supposedly identified a handful of numbers “most overdue” to be selected in an upcoming drawing, based on the longest wait since their last appearance. By these metrics, the number 56, not drawn since May 27, is due up any time now.
The odds of winning any kind of prize, according to Powerball, are 1 in 24.87, based on a $2 play. Winning the grand prize takes a little more wishing and hoping, with odds of 1 in 292,201,338.