Do you employ a system for choosing your lottery numbers? If consequently, are you aware that using such a system might actually reduce your probability of landing a big win? The only way to genuinely improve your prospects of winning the lottery is to buy more entries - and don't let anyone tell you differently, it is just a matter of statistics. Conversely, there are some steps you could take to make certain that, within the event that you do win, you are more very likely to win a bigger amount of money. Let's use the UK lottery as an example. Every week that there is a jackpot winner it appears that the prize is shared among a number of people. Therefore, the easiest way to maximise your winnings within the event that the numbers are chosen is to minimise the number of individuals it is important to share the prize money with. Although you will discover no guarantees in a game of chance such as a lottery, you can find a number of ways through which this could possibly be done. First of all, it's surprising how many individuals use dates to select their numbers. It causes it to be easier for them to remember if they want to play the exact same numbers every week and they might also attach feelings of good luck to certain dates, such as birthdays, anniversaries etc. Therefore the "date numbers", 1 to 31, are picked more often. So make sure that you've got at least 2 or 3 numbers outside of this range. Do not pick numbers which have recently been drawn. Many people believe in "hot streaks" and will be selecting these. Do not pick numbers based upon an arithmetic sequence e.g. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24. This is an extremely common practice and also you may wind up sharing your jackpot with a lot of mathematics teachers! Do not pick numbers which form a pattern on the entry slip, e.g. a cross or perhaps a box. Again this technique is more commonly used than you could imagine and you might have to share your prize with a lot of folks. Don't work with a tips service to select your numbers. It does not matter whether the service is based on some advanced statistical analysis, the total amount of ink on each ball or even the dream visions of some spaced out hippy, you won't be the only person using it and so you are going to be guaranteed to find yourself splitting your winnings with a whole bunch of other winners. The very best way to pick your numbers is at random. You can draw them out of a hat or use one of a number of random generators which are available online for just that purpose. This won't improve your probability of winning - but at least should you win you'll be much less more likely to have to share your loot with a couple of dozen other "lucky" punters.