MILLIONS of Americans buy lottery tickets each year, lured in by the potential to win big and have their lives changed forever.
While the odds may be stacked against ticket holders, the dream of winning the lottery resonates with many.
So what are the best strategies to game the system and give yourself the best chance of winning?
The simple answer is buy as many tickets as you can afford, within reason.
That is according to University of Nevada Professor of Mathematics and Gaming statistician Ashok Singh.
Mr. Singh exclusively told The U.S. Sun that the only chance of increasing your chances of winning is to buy more tickets.
A higher number of tickets increases the likelihood of choosing the right combination of numbers.
While it seems like a simple solution, the sheer volume of different numerical combinations still make it so unlikely that a person is going to win.
Professor Singh, who is an applied statistics and gaming odds expert, said a person’s likelihood of winning the lottery is still so minuscule that even if they buy as many as 100,000 tickets they will still end up losing money.
He said the chances of getting hit by lightening are “much higher” than winning the lottery.
There is no other way to increase your chances other than just buying more tickets
Ashok Singh
“There is no other way to increase your chances other than just buying more tickets,” Professor Singh told The U.S. Sun.
“It is random by design because if it was not random then people would figure it out.
“It is totally up to luck and chance.”
Professor Singh explained the combination of numbers generated in the lottery are called “pseudo random” which is a mathematical formula which is impossible to predict or cheat.
“If I knew the random generator they were using, how they feed it, then I could predict and increase my chances,” Professor Singh said.
“There is no legal way of doing that, but the sequence is so large that even if I purchased 100,000 tickets my chances of winning would still be minuscule and I would be worse off.”
LOTTERY LOVERS
Despite these incredibly low odds, a growing number of Americans are buying lottery tickets each year.
According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, lottery sales totaled more than $113 billion in 2023.
The soaring sales make it one of the most popular forms of gambling in the country.
Lottery winnings make up about 1 to 2% of state revenues with about 40% of every lottery dollar taken in tax.
GET SKILLED
Across all forms of gambling, Professor Singh said the only way to “game” the system was to play a skills based game.
He said Americans should hone their skills at games like Black Jack to increase their chances of winning money.
But Professor Singh cautioned that many Americans falsely believed they could improve their skills in order to win money at chance-based games such as baccarat.
“Baccarat is not a skills based game, it is a game of chance but many people believe it is a game of skill,” he said
