Around the world, serious lottery players are searching for lottery number patterns that can provide them one advantage. There is just one such lottery strategy which is proven to provide them an edge. It utilizes lottery number patterns that exist in all lotteries. They can be called Longshots.

In the event that you don’t know what Longshots are, we will start with some history and also a definition. A few years back there was a lottery strategy that became rather popular that, for lack of an even better name, we’ll call the Hot Number Strategy. Along with it came the standard marketing hype that you would expect. The pitch went something like this:

Since more than 80% of all winning lottery numbers Hit in the last 10 drawings, create your play list from the winners within the last 10 drawings. This tends to boost your chances of winning the lottery.

At the start, it sounds plausible enough. However, let’s think of this. Implicit in this strategy will be the opposite side of the coin. Any lottery numbers that haven’t Hit within the last 10 drawings are considered a rather dubious pick. Hence, these trusted lottery dealer numbers were named Longshots. The name persists to this day and I even use it. Still, I don’t malign the usage of Longshots. The truth is, I applaud them. Including Longshots in a play list is definitely an absolute necessity for just about any viable lottery strategy.

For all of those lottery players who got caught up within the Hot Number Strategy hype, this was, undoubtedly, a really expensive lesson. A lot of cash was spent with little to show for it.

Excluding Longshots resulted in a Hot Number Strategy disaster. The thing is, including Longshots will be 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 within 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. One example is the percentage is higher for a 6/52 lottery than it is for a 6/44 lottery. Yet, you can rest assured that this lottery number pattern is as solid as a rock.

It really is simple for anyone to verify this. Well, maybe without a good lottery software program, not so simple. But, either way, this is the approach. List all of the lottery numbers that have Hit within 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 within the next drawing who were Longshots. Do this for the entire lottery history. If you average the number of Longshots which were winners, you will find the answer lies someplace between 25 and 40 percent.

How can you make use of these facts? Assuming that the answer you got was 30%, then, on the common, 30% of the winning numbers within the next drawing could be Longshots. If you were playing a 6/48 lottery, this means you should expect 1.8 winning numbers to be Longshots. (30% x 6 = 1.8) As always, this does not happen every drawing but it really is unwaveringly persistent over time. For instance, in Lotto Texas, at least 1 of the winning numbers is a Longshot 89% of the time! Put simply, 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, without doubt, asking how you will take good thing about Longshot when you play. Continuing with the example above, it is very simple. Let’s say you opt to pare down a 48 number lottery to a 37 number play list with the aid of lottery analysis software. Not really 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 certain that 11 of those 37 lottery numbers in your play list are Longshots. (30%x37=11.1)

It really is hard to imagine any lottery strategy that doesn’t include Longshots. Serious lottery players everywhere use it. This is called playing the odds. Actually, that’s what all successful gamblers do; play the odds.