6 Ways to Improve Your Chance of Winning Mega Millions Jackpot

Could “calendar month” birthday numbers win a record high Mega Millions jackpot and make us a billion richer?

Lottery analysis reveals Mega Millions' most common numbers drawn, lottery officials don’t want you to know!

Millions of lottery players are queuing to buy tickets for the Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing. Well, who wouldn’t want a chance to win the jackpot?

The highest ever lottery prize in American history is the result of several consecutive drawings yielding no major winner and a steady stream of lottery players purchasing tickets across the country. It comes to no surprise as finally, the odds are in the players' favor since the cost of all 302,000,000 tickets covering every possible combination is a few times less than the actual winnings. So, if you were thinking about trying your luck in lotteries- now is the time to do it!

Maryland Lottery Director of Communications, Carole Gentry sums up why she believes people love to play with “It's the fun dream.”

How do people choose their numbers?

Lots of players are relying on special numbers that have brought them good luck in the past.

Janine Peterson, a Manhattan-based Neil Simon Theatre worker, explains her number preferences: “I use 6 and 13 a lot. Six is my nephew’s number that he goes for when he plays baseball, and 13 is my family number. Number 13 is avoided by everyone as they believe it’s bad luck. We’ve always found it to be a good number.”

Standing close to an electronic sign with the current Mega Millions jackpot amount, Peterson confined that she owns one 10 dollar lottery ticket at home with six-number combinations representing anniversaries, favorite numbers and her mum’s birthday.

I will only play them if it’s a big jackpot, Peterson added.

Depending on the particular year, Peterson could have witnessed better odds of having one of her lucky numbers winning the Mega Millions jackpot, according to data from the lottery officials. The number 6 shows among the top 10 major pool numbers, which are the five numbers preceding the Mega Ball number on a lottery ticket, for the Mega Millions game from the past draws. Janine’s number 6 was chosen 34 times in a total of 324 lottery games in the course of the three-year time frame. However, frequently coming numbers do not imply that the self-selection way improves your odds of winning. Many players are now opting for the technology-based mathematical algorithms.

“Today, we live in such a technological society,” explains Public Information Specialist for the Oregon Lottery, Patrick Johnson. “I think some people just like that feeling of control. They like picking their luck."

With America’s largest lottery jackpot at stake, should we take the nostalgic route, maybe choosing own or the child’s birthday, the day we first fell in love and anniversary dates? Or perhaps, trust the lottery analytics and take a look at the most common lottery numbers drawn during the recent Mega Millions games, alongside other statistics to come up with some good strategy?

While nothing is certain these days, there are still a good few numbers that have come up more frequently than others in the lottery pool — and, of course, there are those that have been picked the fewest number of times, too.

Let’s examine six possible ways to improve your odds for the coming Mega Millions draw lottery officials don’t want you to know:

Way 1. Choose most common numbers in the recent lottery pools.

According to the research submitted by a well-known lottery analytics website Lottoprediction.com, these are statistically the most common Mega Millions lottery numbers for 2017/2018 draws that stand a good chance of being selected for the next Mega Millions drawing.

Way 2. Avoid the least common numbers in the recent pools.

Other data collected by the Lottoprediction analysts reveal the least common Mega Millions lottery numbers in the pools.

Way 3. Is it the right time for the overdue numbers, popular in the past draws?

More helpful data comes from the overdue lottery numbers table. They are numbers that have been popular in the past however, they haven’t been in the pools for some time. Hence, some lottery analysts suggest they are due to be chosen in the next drawings.

Way 4. Organize your lottery ticket to contain most common number pairs.

A list of most common number pairs will help you organize your lottery numbers in the lottery tickets. Some lottery numbers are unexplainably attracted to other “partner” numbers. Love at first sight or does any other number magic stand behind? 

Number 1	Number 2	Occurences	%	Avg Interval
51	53	18	1.21	60.47
39	53	18	1.21	78.64
10	51	18	1.21	70.82
2	17	18	1.21	74.88
31	50	17	1.14	83.75
20	24	17	1.14	84.87
14	43	17	1.14	82.75
13	35	17	1.14	84.00
11	21	17	1.14	66.81

Way 5. Should we largely focus on odd or even numbers on Tuesday?

Additional analytical data, odd vs. even number combinations table brings about the opportunity to look at the proportion of odd/even numbers in a single draw.

Example:
Lets take a look at these draw result examples:
27 · 28 · 32 · 41 · 69 + 12 – this result contains 3 odd numbers (27,41,69) and 3 even numbers (28,32,12)

02 · 22 · 29 · 31 · 34 + 01 – this result contains 3 odd numbers (29,31,01) and 3 even numbers (02,22,34)

 

Odds	Evens	Occurences	%	Avg Interval
0	5	37	2.50	34.94
1	4	210	14.19	6.64
2	3	439	29.68	3.17
3	2	480	32.45	2.88
4	1	200	13.52	6.92
5	0	113	7.64	11.85

Way 6. Will “calendar month” birthday numbers make us a few millions richer?

Now, this final data is priceless as it offers low/high lottery number analysis helping you to decide whether you should solely rely on birthday numbers (also called "low numbers" coming in the first half of your lottery ticket, namely 1-35 for Mega Millions) or "high numbers" (lottery numbers coming in the second half of your ticket, namely 36-70 for the Mega Millions pools). The lottery data analyzer tracks the occurrences of low and high numbers in the whole lottery draw results history. The table below compares the low number occurances (first column) to the high number occurances (second column).

Low	High	Occurences	%	Avg Interval
0	5	105	7.09	11.77
1	4	121	8.18	12.30
2	3	351	23.73	3.96
3	2	474	32.04	2.89
4	1	321	21.70	4.29
5	0	107	7.23	12.80

We hope we have landed you a hand with beating the odds of the world’s most sought-after lottery game. And may the odds be in your favor as you seek to win the world largest lottery prize this Tuesday! With a good strategy to overcome the incredibly long odds — one in 302,575,350, to be exact — we hope you will end up with more money than most people would ever know what to do with. We would love to hear from you if we have helped you live a happier and financially free life!