Many games that you play offer a reasonable chance of you winning. But when you play the lottery, you know the chances of walking away with the jackpot prize are always slim. In fact, the odds can be so low that many people think that they just won’t bother. But then again, the top prizes in lotteries are won pretty frequently, and the wins are always unexpected. While the odds of winning the lottery can vary dramatically according to which lottery you play, there are still some things in life that are less likely to happen.
For example, you may have considered the possibility of being eaten by a shark when you’re visiting a beach where sharks have been spotted. But you shouldn’t worry too much about it – the odds of dying after being bitten by a shark are 1 in 264 million. In fact, it’s much more likely that you’ll win the US Powerball lottery – where the odds are 1 in 175 million. Push the odds in your favour by choosing not to swim in the sea and buy yourself a ticket for the next Powerball draw instead!
Four leaf clovers have always been associated with good luck. So what do you think; are you more likely to win the lottery or find a four leaf clover? In fact, you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of finding a four leaf clover, so it’s actually more likely than winning the jackpot in a lottery draw. The Irish lotto odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 8,145, 060. However, if you do enter the Irish lotto you have a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning a share of 2.5% of the total prize money – by matching four numbers and the bonus ball. Suddenly, it feels a better use of time to buy a lotto ticket than hunting around in a field of clover. What are you going to do with a four-leaf clover even if you find one? They have no inherent value and as they can now be artificially produced, they aren’t even that unusual anymore.
So if you decide to play the lottery, how do you increase your chances of winning? Although many people have favourite numbers that they always use, these are often picked by lots of other people. For example, special dates and birthdays take up a lot of the numbers between 1 and 31. If you want to increase your chance of not having to share a jackpot with anyone else, then the best way forward when picking your lottery numbers is to use a random number generator. There are hundreds of these available online and as a lottery draw is always random, your picks might as well be too.
Using this method won’t increase your chances of winning; the odds remain the same. But it will mean that you won’t have to share the prize with quite so many other people should you happen to have those lucky numbers.
