How to Win the Lottery: 5 Tips To Boost Your Odds

We’ve all seen the articles, advertisements and actual lottery winners claiming to have found a way to guarantee a win worth millions when you play the lottery. But are there actually any concrete tips and tricks that will have you cashing in big at the bank from notoriously difficult lotteries like US Powerball? We’ve compiled a list of options to boost your odds of winning the lottery that, with a little luck, could have you winning lottery prizes in no time!

Consistency is Key!

Ensuring that you're regularly playing the lottery may be easier said than done, as remembering and taking out time to enter the draw can definitely become a chore. This is why we think that this lottery-winning tip is game-changer! Playing with a subscription or a multi-draw package ensures that you’ve entered the upcoming draw of your favourite lottery - allowing you to sit back while the winnings come to you!

When you subscribe to a lottery, EuroJackpot online for example, you will automatically be entered into the lottery’s Friday draw every week until you decide to pause your subscription. Many players who have won big were subscribed to multiple lotteries, like LottoSmile's US$1 million Mega Millions winner and US$30 million Florida Lotto winner A.D. from Panama. If you want a play option that’s less permanent, you can purchase tickets with a multi-draw package to any lottery and participate for a set amount of consecutive draws. At LottoSmile, you can choose between a set of 5, 10, 15, 25, and 52 consecutive draws and save up to 25% off your purchase.

Syndicate Play - Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

In 2012, the world’s record lottery jackpot of US$656 million (at that time) was won by a group of friends. Three co-workers from Maryland, calling themselves ‘The ‘Three Amigos’, decided to play Mega Millions together by each putting in US$20 to buy a total of 60 Mega Millions tickets at a local lottery retailer. Being one of three jackpot winners, the group ended up taking home an enormous prize of US$218.6 million! Playing the lottery as a group is also known as a ‘lottery syndicate’. This playing option is so popular that big jackpots are frequently won by syndicates from all over the world!

As these co-workers experienced for themselves, the larger the syndicate, the more tickets are being purchased, and the more tickets you have, the better your chances of winning. The logic behind this is simple. Having a large amount of tickets allows you to cover more number combinations, which will give your syndicate a better chance of winning.

Another reason to play the lottery online is the fact that your can participate in lottery syndicates, making playing as a group more organized and accessible than ever. LottoSmile allows you to join syndicates online for the world’s biggest lotteries, with little to no work involved on your part. You can easily play hundreds of lines for a fraction of the price! All you have to do is choose a syndicate, purchase your shares and you're ready to start winning! LottoSmile's syndicate service sets up syndicates in advance, pre-purchases batches of tickets and notifies players of the results and any wins. You can kick back and relax as hopefully your syndicate will win and your account will be credited with syndicate winnings! In 2012, the world’s record lotto jackpot of US$656 million (at that time) was won by a group of friends. They certainly had a rags to riches lottery story!

Play With More Numbers, Get More Chances To Win

If you’re wondering how to win the lottery, systematic forms are probably the most underrated playing option to help boost your chances of winning the lottery! When you select to play with a systematic form, you will be required to enter more numbers than the game actually requires. The numbers you choose will then be generated into every possible number combination available, which can add up to hundreds of lines. This method not only boosts your chances of winning a lottery prize, but you can win multiple prize divisions if a few of your numbers are picked in the draw, as they will be on several tickets!

So how exactly does it work? Let’s say you have chosen 10 numbers for a lottery that requires a seven-number combination, like Spain EuroMillions. You would be able to play 252 number combinations, which equals 252 chances to win!

While playing with systematic forms isn’t cheapest, it definitely could be very rewarding! Latvian player A.K. managed to scoop up €578,000 in SuperEnalotto prizes using a systematic form with his lucky numbers! As a result of utilizing this strategic playing option, he was able to win from 4 prize categories with 74 winning lines instead of just one. Over the years, A.K. has had thousands of wins by playing with systematic forms, and you can too!

When you play your favourite lotteries with systematic forms at LottoSmile, you’ll be able to choose 6-14 numbers which will be turned in to every possible number combination. It’s easy, and most of all, an effective way of boosting your odds of winning multiple lottery prizes in every draw.

Hot or Cold?

Hot and cold numbers refer to numbers that frequently or rarely come up in lottery draws. Hot numbers are those that are come up often in draws, so when you pick your lotto numbers , it definitely wouldn’t hurt to throw a few in! On the other hand, cold numbers are almost never drawn. This doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t play them though. Lottery numbers are drawn randomly, so every number has a chance to come up. So unless your whole entry is made up of cold numbers, we say that if you have a lucky number that happens to be cold, you should definitely keep it! While this is not necessarily a lottery winning formula, it does give you additional ways to choose numbers and perhaps your numbers will actually win the lottery!

You can find out the hot or cold numbers by combing through the last year or 6 months of winning numbers or use dedicated websites that generate hot and cold numbers for several of the world's leading lotteries. If you’re looking for the numbers from a smaller lottery, you may have to do the detective work yourself.

Playing Small Could Help You Win Big

When we think about winning big, most of us think of lotteries with enormous jackpots and huge followings such as US Powerball, or Mega Millions. Well, they may have the biggest jackpots, but they also have extremely poor winning odds. So, while you may be paid out an enormous prize if you win, the chances of actually winning are very slim. The odds of winning the US Powerball jackpot prize, for example, are 1:292,201,338.

On the other hand, smaller lotteries, while admittedly having smaller jackpot prizes, give you much higher odds of winning prizes. Another perk is that these lotteries usually attract fewer players. Why is this a good thing? Fewer players means less competition, so you may not need to share the prize when you win! One great example of this is Austria Lotto, which hands out prizes to 1 in every 16 tickets. The Austrian lottery’s jackpot prizes are nothing to laugh at either, with a starting jackpot of €1 million that rolls over until it’s been won. Just to give you a peek at how high the jackpot can get, in 2018, Austria Lotto awarded a record jackpot of €15 million! 

At LottoSmile, our lucky winner S.K. won €824,000 playing Austria Lotto in 2016 after playing with us for only a few months! Smaller lotteries with the better odds do have much smaller jackpots, but just because they won’t all make you a multi-millionaire, it doesn’t mean the extra few thousand Euros can’t help change your life! 

Another tip to increase your odds of winning the lottery is playing daily lotteries. These lotteries not only give you a chance to win every day, and sometimes even twice a day, but they're also pretty cost-efficient with some of the least expensive tickets on the site and fantastic odds. A great example of this is Mexico's Chispazo, which has two daily draws and odds at just 1 in 98,280!

A Winning Equation - Can Statistics Help You Win the Lottery?

While it’s well known that the lottery numbers are drawn at random, there are some people who apparently rely on math and statistics to choose numbers that may help them win big.

Consider math professor Joan Ginther from Texas, who won four multi-million dollar prizes over 17 years amounting to US$20.4 million in total wins. Can we assume that this Stanford PHD in Statistics used her skills in mathematics to win the lottery? Or was she just favoured with an unusually large amount of lottery luck? Ginther doesn't talk to the media so apparently we'll never know.

On the other hand, we know exactly how Romanian economist Stefan Mandel won his fortune. While living in communist-era Romania in the 1960s, Mandel came up with an ingenious plan to win the lottery and gain him and his family’s freedom. The economist and amateur mathematician figured that he could win if he calculated the total amount of possible number combinations and then raise the amount needed to buy each of the said combinations. He also needed to find a lottery where the jackpot was at least three times the number of combinations to ensure that he could pay back his investors. He would then print out millions of tickets from his home and purchase in bulk from local retailers to make sure that he had a ticket for each possible combination. His lottery winning formula eventually forced the US lottery authorities to enforce laws forbidding the practices that won Mandel his 14 jackpot prizes.

While it’s not possible to copy his systematic-syndicate scheme to a T anymore, you can still buy as many tickets and combinations as your budget allows to increase your chances of winning big, although you must play responsibly not spending more than you can really afford! Seven-time lottery winner Richard Lustig backed up this method when he claimed that one of the keys to his success is purchasing as many tickets as he could afford along with making sure to use numbers frequently selected in winning draws, also known as hot numbers.

Can These Lottery-Winning Tips Actually Help Bring Home The Gold?

Let’s face it, there are no spells, software or psychic that can predict the jackpot winning numbers for you, unless you've somehow managed to rig the number generator. What you can do is try some of tips we’ve listed to see if they will boost your chances of winning your dream prize when you buy lottery tickets online at LottoSmile.