Around the globe, serious lottery players are searching for lottery number patterns that may provide them a benefit. There is just one such lottery strategy that's proven to provide them an advantage. It utilizes lottery number patterns that exist in all lotteries. They may be called Longshots.

In the event that you don't determine what Longshots are, we will begin with some history and a definition. Several years back there was a lottery strategy that became rather popular that, for lack of a far better name, we'll call the Hot Number Strategy. Along with it came the normal marketing hype that you would expect. The pitch went something like this:

Since more than 80% of all winning lottery numbers Hit within the last 10 drawings, create your play list from the winners within the last 10 drawings. It will boost your prospects of winning the lottery.

In the early stages, it sounds plausible enough. Still, let's think about this. Implicit in the strategy will be the opposite side of the coin. Any lottery numbers that have not Hit in the last 10 drawings are considered a rather dubious pick. Hence, these lottery numbers were named Longshots. The name persists to this day and I even use it. But, I don't malign the use of Longshots. In fact, I applaud them. Including Longshots in a play list is an absolute necessity for just about any viable lottery strategy.

For all of those lottery players who got caught up within the Hot Number Strategy hype, this was, no doubt, an extremely expensive lesson. A lot of cash was spent with little to show for it.

Excluding Longshots resulted in a Hot Number Strategy disaster. In reality, including Longshots is important to any viable lottery strategy because, on the average, 25% to 40% of the winning numbers are Longshots! You heard me right; 25% to 40%.

This has been true for every lottery in the US and Canada for over 20 years. That is when I started analyzing them. The percentage varies from lottery to lottery as the size of the lotteries change. For example, the percentage is higher for a 6/52 lottery than it is for a 6/44 lottery. But, you can be assured that this lottery number pattern is as solid as a rock.

It really is simple for anyone to verify this. Well, maybe without a superb online lottery software program, not so simple. Nonetheless, in either case, this really is the approach. List all the lottery numbers which have Hit within the last 10 drawings for each lottery drawing. Any lottery number not in the list must be a Longshot. Count the number of winning numbers within the next drawing that have been Longshots. Do this for the whole lottery history. If you average the number of Longshots that were winners, you will find the answer lies someplace between 25 and 40 percent.

How can you make use of this data? Assuming that the answer you got was 30%, then, on the regular, 30% of the winning numbers in the next drawing would be Longshots. If you were playing a 6/48 lottery, it means that you should expect 1.8 winning numbers to be Longshots. (30% x 6 = 1.8) Of course, this doesn't happen every drawing but it is unwaveringly persistent over-time. As an example, in Lotto Texas, at least 1 of the winning numbers is a Longshot 89% of the time! Quite simply, you can count on it.

This shows why the Hot Number Strategy practitioners wasted so much cash. On a typical, their play lists were coming up 1.8 numbers short. This must are already (but still is) very frustrating for the players using this weak lottery strategy.

Several of you are, no doubt, asking how you may take benefit from Longshot whenever you play. Continuing with the example above, it's very simple. Let's say you opt to pare down a 48 number lottery to a 37 number play list with the help of lottery analysis software. Not really a bad strategy since you've got eliminated 9,946,728 wagers from play! Since you are expecting 30% of the winning lottery numbers to be Longshots, you make sure that 11 of those 37 lottery numbers within your play list are Longshots. (30%x37=11.1)

It is hard to imagine any lottery strategy that doesn't include Longshots. Serious lottery players everywhere use it. This really is called playing the odds. In reality, that's what all successful gamblers do; play the odds.