Serious lotto players improve their odds of winning the lotto jackpot using a host of lotto strategies. Many of my articles and Lotto Blog posts discuss them. Some of these lotto strategies actually lower a player's costs while preserving his odds. And yet, other lotto strategies can improve a player's odds of winning the lotto jackpot while staying within the player's budget.

A full discussion of such lottery strategies would easily cover several chapters in a book. So, I'll discuss the simplest type of these lottery strategies as an eye opener. The last 371 drawings of the Florida Lotto are used for the following examples, with the last drawing occurring on 7/22/09. In the Florida Lotto, six numbers are drawn out of fifty three.

Florida Lottery Statistics

The simplest form of this lottery strategy asks the question, 'In each wager, how many odd numbers are drawn?' There are only seven possibilities. A wager will have no odd numbers in it, 1 odd number, 2 odd numbers, 3 odd numbers, 4 odd numbers, 5 odd numbers or 6 odd numbers. Of course, the reverse is also true. A wager that has no odd numbers in it has 6 even numbers in it. Now, in the FL653 lotto, there are a total of 22,957,480 possible wagers. Here are the statistics. There are:

230,230 wagers with 0 odd numbers or 1.00% of all possible wagers 1,776,060 wagers with 1 odd number or 7.74% of all possible wagers 5,247,450 wagers with 2 odd numbers or 22.86% of all possible wagers 7,605,000 wagers with 3 odd numbers or 33.13% of all possible wagers 5,703,750 wagers with 4 odd numbers or 24.84% of all possible wagers 2,098,980 wagers with 5 odd numbers or 9.14% of all possible wagers 296,010 wagers with 6 odd numbers or 1.29% of all possible wagers

This listing of lottery statistics tells the story. If you have been follow the Florida Lotto closely (any lotto for that matter), you know that the lotto jackpot rarely contains zero odd numbers (all even numbers). How rarely? In the FL653 lotto this has only happened 4 times in 371 drawings. This is obvious from the table above. It shows that only 1.00% of all possible wagers have 0 odd numbers. Put another way this should happen on the average of once every 100 drawings.

Let's look at the opposite end of this table. The table shows that a lotto jackpot containing 6 odd numbers is also very rare. This occurred only 4 times in 371 drawings. It is worth noting here that it should happen more often than zero odd numbers does, because it's percentage is higher; 1.29%. Why you ask? Because, there are more odd numbers than even numbers from which to choose; 27 odd numbers and 26 even numbers. Therefore, odd numbers have a slight statistical advantage. The 1.29% means that this should happen on the average of once every 78 drawings.

Spending Less

The question is, 'How does this help me spend less?' Assume your lottery budget is $50 per drawing and you purchase $1 wagers. You generate 50 wagers but you remove any wager that contains all odd or all even numbers. This removes, for example, 3 wagers. A net savings of $3.

This statement will, no doubt, upset some of you. You are probably saying that if the lotto jackpot winners are all odd or all even, then I'd be wrong. And, you are absolutely correct! But, my friend, keep in mind, that only happens about once every 100 (78) drawings. As for myself, I prefer to be wrong once and save money the other 99(77) times.

Increasing Your Odds

You can use a variation of this lottery strategy to improve your odds of winning the lotto jackpot. It's actually very simple. Buy three more lotto tickets with your $3. This gives you a slight advantage because you are concentrating your entire budget on wagers that make good sense. You've taken your fishing line out of a mud puddle and put it back in the lake where the big fish are. You may not win the big one, but you've now got three more lines in the water.

Paying Attention

Now, do serious lottery players always play this way? No. Once in a while, by paying attention, they notice little things, that their lottery software brings to light, called opportunities. I've identified one such opportunity in the FL653 lotto. Wagers with all odd numbers should occur on the average of every 78 drawings. But, in the Florida Lotto this event hasn't happened in 249 drawings. Can you say 'Overdue'?

How can you take advantage of this? Each player has their own style, but here is an example of a typical response. First, the player does not abandon his normal lotto strategy. He still commits most of his lotto budget to that strategy. Second, he would use a part of his budget, say $10, and purchase wagers with all odd numbers. If all odd numbers hit in the next drawing, then the players odds of winning the lotto jackpot will be 10:296,010 or 1:29,601. A fantastic improvement!!!