Changing or playing the same lottery numbers for each draw doesn’t affect your chances of winning. Each draw is independent. Nonetheless, I still suggest you play consistently for each draw.
I don’t have a mathematical basis for saying that consistency plays an important role in playing the lottery, but what I am getting at is that this question is the least important thing to worry about in a lottery game. Using the same lottery numbers could be more convenient, especially if you implement a lottery wheel strategy. Some lottery systems allow you to fill out a form and use the same form over and over. If you are playing multiple lines, this will save you time.
Whether important or not, let’s discuss this issue in more detail below.
Table of Contents
Winning Takes a Long Streak of Losses
Since the odds of winning a lottery game are unfavorable, the only way to increase your chances of winning the jackpot is to buy more tickets and continue buying tickets over a long period. If you aim to win the jackpot, expect that winning will take a long streak of losses.
To calculate how long it takes to win a jackpot, we are especially interested in calculating the probability of not winning and then deriving the probability of winning by calculating the complement.
P(winning) = 1 – P(losing)
In US Powerball, for example, the probability of winning the jackpot is 1 in 292,201,338.
So if you buy one Powerball ticket for the first time, you have a 1/292,201,338 probability of winning.
Therefore, the probability of losing is expressed as:
P(losing) = 1 – (1/292,201,338) = 0.999999996577702
or simply:
P(losing) = 292,201,337/292,201,338 = 0.999999996577702
On your second attempt, the probability that you lose twice in a row is 0.99999999657 multiplied by itself.
P(losing) = 0.99999999657 * 0.99999999657 = 0.999999993155404
or simply:
P(losing) = 0.999999996572 = 0.999999993155404
Therefore, the probability that you lose n times is this P(losing) raised to the nth power.
Notice that 0.999999993155404 is less than 0.99999999657. This means that when you continue buying tickets, you continue to suffer losses, but at the same time, you gain a minuscule step towards winning the jackpot.
So, when you purchase around 202,538,522 Powerball tickets, our calculation tells us that you have a 50/50 chance to win the Powerball jackpot.
P(winning) = 1 – (0.99999999657)202,538,522 tickets ≈ 0.50
This reminds me that buying an S&P 500 index fund is a much better decision than buying lottery tickets.
To win a 6/49 lottery game, the odds of winning the jackpot remain 1 in 14 million, whether you change numbers or not. Therefore, as a player, you should focus more on improving your success-to-failure ratio rather than worrying about individual numbers.
My Not-So-Mathematical Explanation
Consider the following hypothetical premise:
Your wife is lost in an unknown desert, and you are determined to find her. Your strategy is to check every square-meter block of the desert. If the desert is as large as the Australian Tattslotto 6/45 system, you must check 8,145,060 square blocks.
So, let’s talk about what will happen under two different scenarios:
Scenario #1: You keep moving from one block to another while your wife stays in one place.
If you check all 8,145,060 squares of the planet, the probability that you will find her is guaranteed 100%. It’s just a matter of how fast you can check all 8 million blocks.
Scenario #2: You and your wife keep moving from one block to another.
In this scenario, both of you are looking for one another. Therefore, you and your wife move to different blocks in a random direction. The probability that you find her resets to 1 in 8 million each time you move.
An Imperfect Analogy
Okay, that may not be the perfect analogy, but what I see in the lottery is similar.
If your wife’s name is “Lottery,” and you keep looking for her, but she keeps moving, The probability of finding her exact location always resets because you do not know where her next block is. Therefore, looking for her would take a lifetime. You may find her, but it’s also possible that it may not happen.
But …
Maybe you can do something better.
If you stop moving, Lottery will step into every block randomly and eventually find you in the desert. It’s just a matter of how fast she steps in all the square blocks.
Similarly, a lottery game may find your numbers in one of its many draws if you don’t change your numbers. It’s just a matter of time.
Playing the Same Lottery Numbers and The Power of Persistent Play
Each ticket you buy moves you closer to winning the jackpot because of your continued participation in lottery draws.
In the Tattslotto 6/45 lottery game, the probability of losing the jackpot is 0.999999877. Therefore, the probability of losing n times is this number raised to the nth power.
P(losing) = 0.999999877n tickets
By persistently playing, you’re slowly approaching the limit to have a 50/50 chance of winning the first prize, buying 5,645,725 tickets or more.
P(50/50 winning the jackpot) = 1 – 0.9999998775,645,725 tickets
What does this mean? This means that persistent play has an important role.
Assuming you’re consistently playing the same lottery numbers, you will eventually match the winning numbers if given many opportunities.
However, it’s not likely we will live too long to witness a hundred million draws, considering that the average human life expectancy is about 79 years.1
That’s why the lottery is just for fun. You only spend the money you can afford to lose because you’re paying the price of a good time.
It’s too difficult to win the lottery. Don’t take the lottery so seriously. And if you have to play despite the odds, you might as well play it right. Strategize your game. Here are some lotto tips for you to consider. Of course, I encourage you to study how the lottery works from the perspective of mathematics, so don’t forget to check out The Winning Lottery Formula Using Math.
Patience is a Virtue: Playing the Same Lottery Numbers Consistently Can Be Good
Some people’s patience turned into gold because they unceasingly played for their combinations many times.
Terry Coggeshall won over $366,000 from the North Carolina Cash 5. He and his wife had been playing the same combination for 26 years.2
Larry Gambles has been using the numbers on his jerseys for 15 years. He has won not once but twice using this combination, totaling $1.1 million.3
Follow the Dominant Composition
Stories of lottery success are truly inspiring, but I am not saying that you will also have the same fate if you play the same way. Not everyone can be lucky.
As I always advise, the best way to pick lottery numbers is to use the dominant composition to improve your success-to-failure ratio. Please read The Lotto Secret: Master the Math of Winning.
Of course, the dominant composition will not tell you which numbers will win next. It only improves your success-to-failure ratio.
Now, if you believe you have the optimal S/F ratio, consistently playing the same lottery numbers might be more convenient and favorable.
There are two ways to determine a game’s dominant composition: manually or using a Lotterycodex calculator.
Let’s say your game is North Carolina Cash 5. This is a 5/43 game, so the best combinatorial compositions here are 3-odd-2-even and 3-low-2-high.
If your favorite combination is 23-24-25-26-27, it has the best odd/even composition but the worst low-high sets. This suggests that you’re not following the dominant composition. Therefore, playing with this combination repeatedly might not give you the best success-to-failure ratio. And I wouldn’t suggest that you use this combination for each draw.
How can the dominant composition be determined? The process can be laboriously complex, so we need a computer program to help us achieve this easily.
Using a Lotterycodex calculator, we divide a 5/43 game into the following sets of numbers:
Generated by Lotterycodex Calculator
Using the above sets of numbers, Lotterycodex suggests only three dominant templates, as shown below:
Generated by Lotterycodex Calculator
Based on the law of large numbers,4 templates #1, #2, and #3 will dominate a 5/43 game and continue to dominate as the number of draws increases. For example, you will see how Template #1 dominated the other templates in 100 draws and maintains its dominance up to 5000 draws.
Generated by Lotterycodex Calculator
These templates can help you select numbers to change your success-to-failure ratio positively.
Knowing how to win in lottery games is all about making informed decisions. You decide how much to spend, which combinations to mark on the play slip, and when to play, but ultimately, ensure you have a better success-to-failure ratio every step.
Remember that you can always play the same combinations each time you play your lottery game. But when you do this, ensure you’ve made an informed choice.
Explore more: