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

If you don’t know what Longshots are, we will start with some history and a definition. A number of years back there was a lottery strategy that became rather popular that, for lack of a better name, we will call the Hot Number Strategy. Along with it came the common 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 can increase your chances of winning the lottery.

At the beginning, it sounds plausible enough. However, let’s think about this. Implicit in the strategy is 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 lottery numbers were named Longshots. The name persists to this day and I even use it. But, I don’t malign the usage of Longshots. The truth is, I applaud them. Including Longshots in a play list is 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, without doubt, a very expensive lesson. A whole lot of money was spent with little to show for it.

Excluding Longshots resulted in a Hot Number Strategy disaster. The thing is, 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 within the US and Canada for over twenty years. That is 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’s for a 6/44 lottery. But, you may rest assured that this lottery number pattern is as solid as a rock.

It’s simple for anyone to verify this. Well, maybe without an excellent lottery software program, not so simple. But, in any case, this really is the approach. List all the lottery numbers which have Hit within the last 10 drawings for each lottery drawing. Any lottery number not in the list must be a Longshot. Count the range of winning numbers within the next drawing that were Longshots. Do this for the whole lottery history. If you average the range of Longshots that have been winners, you shall find the answer lies someplace between 25 and 40%.

How can you make use of these details? Assuming that the answer you got was 30%, then, on the typical, 30% of the winning numbers in the next drawing will be Longshots. If you were playing a 6/48 lottery, it means that you should expect 1.8 winning numbers to be Longshots. (30% x 6 = 1.8) Keep in mind, this doesn’t happen every drawing but it’s unwaveringly persistent over-time. For example, in Lotto Texas, at least 1 of the winning numbers is a Longshot 89% of the time! To paraphrase, you can count on it.

This shows why the Hot Number Strategy practitioners wasted so much money. On a normal, their play lists were coming up 1.8 numbers short. This must have been (but still is) very frustrating for the players using this weak lottery strategy.

Several of you are, undoubtedly, asking the way you can take benefit from Longshot when you play. Continuing with the example above, it’s very simple. Let’s say you opt to pare down a 48 number lottery to a 37 number play list with the assistance of lottery analysis software. Not just 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 ensure that 11 of those 37 lottery numbers within your play list are Longshots. (30%x37=11.1)

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