Sure you can readily stroll into just about any store and buy a lottery ticket. It is just that easy. That's just as it should be. Playing the lottery may be a fun and easy diversion with the possibility of a serious payoff. You, in contrast, are a More about the author serious player. The truth that you are reading this shows that. You are motivated sufficient to wade through more information to discover ways to cut out the bad habits and practices and locate a better way to play the lottery within an intelligent manner. Here is a list of 10 too common mistakes that lottery players make. Almost every one of these items may very well be costing you ticket money, time, frustration, and perhaps even millions of dollars. Read them, take them to heart, and then put them into practice. Playing the Wrong Lottery Games Have you ever really considered which games you play and why? How much money do you really need to win? What amount of winnings would make an effect on your life? Here in Texas we have several different choices. You can play a large multi-state game like Mega-Millions with HUGE multi-million dollar payoffs however the unfortunate odds of only 1 chance in 175,711,536 of taking home the jackpot! Wow, that is one ticket for each of over half the populace of the U.S.A. On the flip side the Texas Two-Step lottery prize begins at $200,000 and has often reached a million dollars. The odds of winning the smaller game are only 1 in 1,832,600! By switching from the Mega-Millions game to the Texas Two-Step you boost your chance of winning a prize by over 95 times! Put one other way you might have to buy 95 Mega-Millions tickets to have the same odds of winning with one Texas Two-Step ticket. Within the area you live you can find probably the same choices between small games with small prizes like pick thee games, five and six ball games with mid-range payouts, and the huge multi-state games with incredible odds against you. Playing Birthdays as Lottery Number Picks Trust me, I know. You've got a series of numbers that you have chosen based upon your children's birthdays as well as the day you got married and your mom and dad's wedding anniversary date. Bad move. Here is why. Whenever you choose lottery numbers according to meaningful dates you limit your choices to the number of days in a month. To paraphrase you are restricted to numbers from a pool of 1 to 31. As an example of the problem in this method think about this. Within the Texas Lotto game 6 numbers are drawn from a pool of 54 numbers. 54 numbers provide you with a whopping 25,827,165 possible combinations! When you decide on the pool of numbers which range from 1 to 31, how many combinations do you think there are to choose from? You can find a measly little 736,281. Think of that. Whenever you choose between 1 and 31 you get 736,281 possible combinations BUT you absolutely, positively lose out on the additional 25,090,884 possible combinations! Choosing birthday numbers decreases any chance of your having the winning combination by almost 97%. That is insane. I know, you read about several men and women that chose birthday numbers and won millions. I also realize that your string of birthday numbers has EXACTLY the same chance of being drawn as any of the additional 25,827,165 possible combinations. It's true, each combination has the same chance of being drawn. But, are you ready to cut out almost 97% of your possible winning chances? I am not willing to quit almost all of the possible winning combinations simply to use sentimental choices. My goal is to play smarter than that.