With Mega Millions and Powerball on the rise, a lot of us are playing the "What would you do if you won the lottery?" game.
The first stop on the path to that dream of winning the BIG bucks? How to choose those winning lottery numbers.
Team Jackpocket delved into the fascinating stories of past lottery winners and the unique strategies they employed to handpick their numbers. There are many different ways to choose lottery numbers, but we rounded up some of the most popular methods.
9 Ways Lottery Players Choose Their Winning Numbers
1. Birthdays & Anniversaries
Many people choose numbers that hold personal significance, such as birthdays or special dates. In the case of this $25K-a-year-for-life winner in North Carolina, it was a mash-up of a few personal digits: her birthday, her son's birthday and his football jersey number.
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2. Lucky Numbers
Some winners have relied on numbers they consider lucky or have a positive association with. A $1,000,0000 Cash4Life winner told Jackpocket that their father's lucky numbers became their own: “Those [winning Cash4Life] numbers were actually my father’s numbers. My father passed away, so I’ve been playing his numbers ever since.”
3. Going Random
Numerous winners have opted for completely random number combinations, either using Quick Picks or generating them through random number generators. Jackpocket's record $9.4 million winner told us that of her five Pick-6 tickets on that fateful drawing, two of them were Quick Picks and three of them were a combination of birthdays and important dates. This time, the Quick Picks had it! The winning numbers? 04, 28, 31, 37, 41 and 43.
4. Family Member's Ages
Some winners have selected numbers based on the ages of their family members, such as children, parents, or siblings. Don't forget pets! A Jackpocket player in New Jersey won $1,000,000 with this strategy: “Everything was an age or a birthday. The first one was my wife and then my youngest son. The third one was me and then the dog.”
5. Random Patterns
Some winners have chosen numbers based on random patterns they observed in their surroundings, such as objects or patterns in nature. And this one's pretty random: a Maryland lottery player used the license plate number from her wrecked car to win a $25,000 lottery prize.
6. Dreams & Intuition
A few winners have claimed to have received their winning numbers through dreams, visions, or other forms of intuition. A Jackpocket player in New Jersey said his winning numbers came to him in dreamland. "The numbers came clear to me and I played them," he said.
7. Recurring Numbers
Some winners have noticed certain numbers repeatedly appearing in their lives and decided to include them in their lottery number choices. In April 2019, Deborah Brown of Richmond, Virginia kept seeing the same four numbers. When she decided to do something about it and play, she won $150,000. She said, "I nearly had a heart attack!"
8. Fortune Cookies
Don't throw away that fortune! A recent retiree in North Carolina played some fortune cookie numbers from a Vietnamese restaurant given to him by his granddaughter. Those numbers netted him a $344.6 million Powerball!
9. Previous Winning Numbers
Some winners have incorporated previously drawn winning numbers into their combinations, assuming that they may have a higher chance of repeating. Ralph Laird of California created a computer program that randomized previous winning Lotto numbers. He went on to win $27.58 million, a California Lottery record high back in 1990! We rounded up the most drawn Powerball numbers of 2024 if you'd like some inspiration.
⚡️ Ready to pick your own lucky numbers? Get in the game on the Jackpocket lottery app for mobile or desktop!
FAQs
Some winners have chosen numbers based on random patterns they observed in their surroundings, such as objects or patterns in nature. And this one's pretty random: a Maryland lottery player used the license plate number from her wrecked car to win a $25,000 lottery prize.
What are the 5 most common winning lottery numbers? ›
The five most frequent numbers are 17, 31, 10, 46, and 20 — all five have been drawn at least once since the last Mega Millions jackpot was won in December. As for the Mega Ball, only six numbers have been drawn more than 100 times: 1, 3, 9, 10, 15, and 7.
What is the best lottery number picking strategy? ›
In particular, pick random numbers. If you pick your favorite number or the day of your birthday like the 7th, which is the day of the next drawing, many people can be doing the same and that puts a lot of numbers between 1 and 31. Picking your own numbers doesn't change the odds of winning.
Has anyone ever won Mega Millions with Quick Pick? ›
$522 Million (California)
Once again, this winning ticket was a result of a Quick Pick. The lucky winner chose to take the cash option of $340 million before taxes and said she planned to pay off debt and buy a new home with her newfound fortune.
Who won the lottery 14 times? ›
Most people can only dream of winning the lottery, so it is crazy to hear of lucky folks who have hit jackpots not just once, but multiple times. Well Stefan Mandel is one of those people, winning a whopping 14 times, but for him, luck didn't have much to do with it.
What is the luckiest lottery numbers ever? ›
What are the luckiest Powerball numbers?
- 23 - Drawn 85 times.
- 39 - Drawn 85 times.
- 33 - Drawn 84 times.
- 62 - Drawn 71 times.
- 69 - Drawn 84 times.
- 64 - Drawn 84 times.
- 37 - Drawn 83 times.
- 28 - Drawn 83 times.
There is no mathematical formula or method that can accurately predict the winning numbers in a lottery. Lotteries are typically designed to be random and based on chance, making it impossible to predict the outcome with certainty. Each number in a lottery draw is usually drawn independently and randomly.
How to win lottery mathematically? ›
There is only one known way to ensure winning the jackpot. That is to buy at least one lottery ticket for every possible number combination. For example, one has to buy 13,983,816 different tickets to ensure to win the jackpot in a 6/49 game.
Is there any trick to picking lottery numbers? ›
Aside from purchasing multiple lottery tickets with different number combinations, there is no way to increase your chance of winning the lottery with one ticket, Clotfelter said. However, it can help to let the computer pick your numbers instead of choosing them yourself.
How to strategically win the lottery? ›
“The only way to really increase the odds of winning any lottery is to buy more tickets. The more tickets you buy, the more chances you have to win,” Kapoor said. “I've seen it all and those tips are usually technically true but useless, or are just not true,” said Lesser, who maintains a website on lottery literacy.
A ticket sold in Illinois has won the second Mega Millions® jackpot of 2024! After matching all six numbers drawn Tuesday night – the white balls 19, 37, 40, 63 and 69, plus the gold Mega Ball 17 – the single ticket takes the prize of $552 million ($260.2 million cash).
Who is the biggest lottery winner in the world? ›
The biggest jackpot of all time in America was a $2.04 billion Powerball win on Nov. 7, 2022, in California. Who won the $2 billion jackpot? The winner of the greatest jackpot in a national lottery was Edwin Castro, who was the 1-in-292.2 million winner of the biggest lottery jackpot of all time.
What is the largest lottery jackpot ever recorded? ›
1. $2.04 billion. The largest lottery jackpot to date, a Powerball drawing, was won on Nov. 7, 2022.
How much money does Richard Lustig have? ›
Lustig's total wins amount to a value of $1,052,205.58 (before taxes).
Who wins the lottery Shirley Jackson? ›
In a cruel twist of irony, Tessie is the “winner” of the lottery. Everyone quickly prepares for the end of the ritual. Jackson's narrator remarks that, although many aspects of the ritual have been forgotten, the use of stones has been endlessly preserved.
What did Oliver Swanick win? ›
As the winner of Nipton's lottery, he was the only person allowed to leave the town alive and unharmed.
What lottery numbers are most likely to win? ›
If you plan to play the drawing, do you have numbers in mind? A new study reveals the lottery numbers you should play to win big: The number 28 is drawn most often across all lotteries, with an average frequency of 201.4. The numbers 16 and 39 are second and third, with average frequencies of 200.6 and 199, ...
What are the 6 most popular Lotto numbers? ›
Ahead of the draw the National Lottery has shared the top six most drawn Lotto balls since 1994, which are: 23, 38, 31, 25, 33 and 11. The National Lottery also revealed how many times each of the balls had been drawn as both a main ball and a bonus ball.
What are the 7 luckiest numbers for Lotto Max? ›
Of the past 4,160 plays, the number 45 ranks number one being drawn 566 times. Next comes the numbers 31, 34, 38, 40 and 43. The number 5 is the most commonly drawn for the Bonus ball number. Top numbers selected for Lotto Max of the past 979 draws include 19, 39, 28, 7, 2, 24 and 30.
What are hot numbers in the lottery? ›
Hot numbers are the numbers that are drawn most often in any given lottery in any given time frame.
