Is there a strategy to win Powerball?
Powerball is arguably the most famous lottery in the world. Like any other lotteries, the winning combinations are always random. Since lotteries offer such high prize pools for winners, people have always tried to figure out how to win, or at least how to increase their chances of winning. Powerball has way too many possible winning combinations that it is impossible to win by buying all of them like Stefan Mandel did.
The only reasonable thing we can do is looking at the previous draws and figure out some kind of a pattern of the most probable combinations.
Or you can use various strategies that come out of statistical measurements and try your luck.
Odd and Even numbers
When we talk about numbers, we have to mention odd and even numbers. Why? Because we can look at statistics and realize a few useful things.
First of all, if you bet on Powerball you may want to pick both even and odd numbers. The most probable combination of the five numbers is the ration of 3 to 2 or vice versa. You could probably guess it, the most common combination is the average of both. On average, they are drawn in 70 percent of all Powerball games.
Spread out your numbers!
Many people like to bet on their birthdays or any favourite days of the year. The problem is that Powerball has 69 numbers and months have a maximum of 31 days. That means that a lot of bets are not even using the upper half of the possible winning numbers.
That isn’t good for two reasons. If the drawn numbers are high, you will lose, and if the numbers are luckily low and you win, there is a higher chance that other people might split the prize with you.
When talking about high and low numbers, you may always want to split your picks across both groups. When you pick all five numbers from the lower or higher half of the possible numbers, you have an extremely low chance of winning. From all Powerballs winning combinations, less than five percent were with all numbers from one of those groups. We have to remember that taking bets with lower chances of winning while not playing for higher rewards is just not worth it. The best way to bet according to this criteria is again b the rule of 3 to 2 or vice versa.
Bet on groups of numbers
The history of Powerball winners can teach us something. Usually, many of the numerical groups you could think of don’t get drawn at all. For example, out of the five numbers, four of them can easily be only in the 20s or 30s. Don’t be scared to put a few numbers close to each other or just don’t spread your numbers too evenly across all number options.
Don’t go for all extreme numbers
The reason why you should not go for all numbers of high or low value is simple. The probability of all five numbers being chosen from one group is very low. In fact, the sum of all your numbers should be higher than 130 and lower than 221. In this range, we have seen the most winnings. To give you an idea, around 70 % of all Powerball winnings were from this category.
Don’t be afraid of the same numbers
More than one third of Powerballs draws have at least one number the same as in a previous draw. That means that it not only happens, but it is also very likely, and worth betting on. There is even a pretty high chance of two or more numbers being the same as in a previous round.
Think about streaks
You can look at each number’s history and look at the current streak to higher your potential chance of winning. All numbers will eventually be drawn, but at the same time, it is very likely that some numbers will not get picked for many rounds. Half of the winning combinations include at least one number that wasn’t in a winning combination for more than six rounds.
But that does not have to be always necessarily a good thing to pursue. It can always happen that a number will not be in a winning combination for more than a hundred rounds. If you were that unlucky and made your mind to pursue this number, you would be very unhappy with the outcome.
Don’t get too inspired by previous winners
Many people like to bet on combinations of numbers that have been winning in the past. Seeing people on TV get rich after winning a jackpot often makes people believe that they used the lucky numbers. The problem is that first of all, the chances of two lotteries win with the same combination is one out of almost three million. And second of all, many other people will bet on it as well, which will lower your potential winnings, because you would have to split it.
Spread your numbers evenly
One of the most popular strategies is betting on consecutive numbers. It is understandable if you think about the lottery as a random generator of numbers, there is no need to think about it, right?
But in Powerball’s history, it has never happened, nor was it ever close to having all numbers consecutive.
If you are still planning to bet using this strategy, imagine how lucky you would have to be. You would be the lottery winner, and you would also be the first one to win with all consecutive numbers. That is a goal for very ambitious people.
Still betting on consecutive numbers is the most popular strategy. Even when on average, the numbers are picked evenly from the whole pool of options.
Conclusion
There are many strategies that we went through. None of them will ever guarantee you a win. But if you believe in statistics more than in your luck, they could help you win some smaller prizes or even a jackpot! But in the end, it is all about having fun, so maybe you shouldn’t think about it too much.
