Around the world, serious lottery players are searching for lottery number patterns that will provide them an advantage. There is one such lottery strategy that is proven to provide them an edge. It utilizes lottery number patterns that exist in all lotteries. They are called Longshots.
If you don’t know what Longshots are, we’ll start with some history and a definition. A few years back there was a lottery strategy that became rather popular that, for lack of a better name, we’ll call the Hot Number Strategy. Along with it came the typical marketing hype that you would expect. The pitch went something like this:
Since more than 80% of all winning lottery numbers Hit within the last 10 drawings, create your play list from the winners in the last 10 drawings. This will increase your chances of winning the lottery.
At first, it sounds plausible enough. But, let’s think about this. Implicit in this strategy is the opposite side of the coin. Any lottery numbers that haven’t Hit in the last 10 drawings are considered a rather dubious pick. Hence, these lottery numbers were named Longshots. The name persists to this day and I even use it. But, I do not malign the use of Longshots. In fact, I applaud them. Including Longshots in a play list is an absolute necessity for any viable lottery strategy.
For all of those lottery players who got caught up in the Hot Number Strategy hype, this was, no doubt, a very expensive lesson. A lot of money was spent with little to show for it.
Excluding Longshots resulted in a Hot Number Strategy disaster. You see, including Longshots is essential to any viable lottery strategy because, on the average, 25% to 40% of the winning numbers are Longshots! You heard me right; 25% to 40%.
This has been true for every lottery in the US and Canada for over 20 years. That’s when I started analyzing them. The percentage varies from lottery to lottery as the size of the lotteries change. For example, the percentage is higher for a 6/52 lottery than it is for a 6/44 lottery. But, you can rest assured that this lottery number pattern is as solid as a rock.
It is simple for anyone to verify this. Well, maybe without an excellent lottery software program, not so simple. But, either way, this is the approach. List all of the lottery numbers that have Hit in the last 10 drawings for each lottery drawing. Any lottery number not in the list must be a Longshot. Count the number of winning numbers in the next drawing that were Longshots. Do this for the entire lottery history. If you average the number of Longshots that were winners, you will find the answer lies somewhere between 25 and 40 percent.
How can you take advantage of this information? Assuming that the answer you got was 30%, then, on the average, 30% of the winning numbers in the next drawing would be Longshots. If you were playing a 6/48 lottery, this means that you should expect 1.8 winning numbers to be Longshots. (30% x 6 = 1.8) Of course, this doesn’t happen every drawing but it is unwaveringly persistent over time. For example, in Lotto Texas, at least 1 of the winning numbers is a Longshot 89% of the time! In other words, you can count on it.
This shows why the Hot Number Strategy practitioners wasted so much money. On the average, their play lists were coming up 1.8 numbers short. This must have been (and still is) very frustrating for the players using this weak lottery strategy.
Some of you are, no doubt, asking how you can take advantage of Longshot when you play. Continuing with the example above, it is very simple. Let’s say you decide to pare down a 48 number lottery to a 37 number play list with the help of lottery analysis software. Not a bad strategy since you have eliminated 9,946,728 wagers from play! Since you are expecting 30% of the winning lottery numbers to be Longshots, you make sure that 11 of those 37 lottery numbers in your play list are Longshots. (30%x37=11.1)
It is hard to imagine any lottery strategy that doesn’t include Longshots. Serious lottery players everywhere use it. This is called playing the odds. In fact, that’s what all successful gamblers do; play the odds.
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