First thing’s first. Don’t play the lottery. It’s a tax on people who are bad at math. Spend your money on something else that brightens your day, or put it in a savings account and go on a vacation every few years on what you will save. However – if you feel pressured into joining an office lottery pool, or if you just cannot resist the urge for some low risk gambling, here are the ONLY ways you can help your chances.

You cannot increase your chance of winning. Period.

This important. The numbers you pick, no matter what they are, have no better or worse chance of winning, no matter what they are and no matter what numbers came up last week. But you can increase the amount you will win, if you do win. Many lottery jackpots are shared between multiple winners, and many smaller prizes are determined by the amount of winners at that level.  In both of these cases, you have the opportunity to choose numbers that are less likely to be chosen by others.  How many people will choose the numbers 20,21,22,23,24,25,26?  Most people tend to think that it would be super unlikely for those numbers to show up.  But the truth is that they have just as good of a chance as any combination.

The fact is that a lot of people use “quick pick” options to choose their numbers, but many office pools choose their own numbers, and use them every week.  Also, many superstitious people like to pick their own number.  The key is that those numbers are very often related to numbers that have personal meaning.  Like dates.  This is key.  The numerical range of dates does not have the same distribution as the possible lottery numbers. There are no months with 32 days – 32 is a good number to start with when picking numbers for the lottery.

So. If you must play the lottery, pick high numbers, and group them in ways that look like they would never be picked.