If you don't determine what Longshots are, we will start with some history as well as a definition. Several years back there was a lottery strategy that became rather popular that, for lack of a more suitable name, we will call the Hot Number Strategy. Along with it came the common marketing hype that you would expect. The pitch went something like this:
Since Learn Alot more than 80% of all winning lottery numbers Hit in the last 10 drawings, create your play list from the winners in the last 10 drawings. This is going to enhance your chances of winning the lottery.
At first, it sounds plausible enough. But, let's think of this. Implicit in this particular strategy will be the opposite side of the coin. Any lottery numbers that haven't Hit within the last 10 drawings will be considered a rather dubious pick. Hence, these lottery numbers were named Longshots. The name persists to this day and I even use it. Nonetheless, I do not malign the utilization of Longshots. In fact, I applaud them. Including Longshots in a play list is definitely 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, without doubt, a very expensive lesson. A lot of cash was spent with little to show for it.
Excluding Longshots resulted in a Hot Number Strategy disaster. The truth is, including Longshots is crucial to any viable lottery strategy because, on a normal, 25% to 40% of the winning numbers are Longshots! You heard me right; 25% to 40%.
This has been true for every lottery within the US and Canada for over twenty years. That's when I started analyzing them. The percentage varies from lottery to lottery as the size of the lotteries change. As an example, the percentage is higher for a 6/52 lottery than it is for a 6/44 lottery. However, you can be assured that this lottery number pattern is as solid as a rock.
It's simple for someone to verify this. Well, maybe without a great lottery software program, not so simple. But, in any case, this is the approach. List all of the lottery numbers that have Hit within the last 10 drawings for each lottery drawing. Any lottery number not within the list must be a Longshot. Count the range of winning numbers within the next drawing that were Longshots. Do this for the whole lottery history. If you average the number of Longshots which were winners, you will find the answer lies someplace between 25 and 40 percent.
How can you take advantage of these facts? Assuming that the answer you got was 30%, then, on the regular, 30% of the winning numbers within the next drawing could be Longshots. If you were playing a 6/48 lottery, consequently you should expect 1.8 winning numbers to be Longshots. (30% x 6 = 1.8) As always, this will not happen every drawing but it's unwaveringly persistent over time. For example, in Lotto Texas, at least 1 of the winning numbers is a Longshot 89% of the time! In other words, you can count on it.
This shows why the Hot Number Strategy practitioners wasted so much cash. On an average, their play lists were coming up 1.8 numbers short. This must happen to be (but still is) very frustrating for the players using this weak lottery strategy.
Several of you are, without doubt, asking how you may take good thing about Longshot whenever you play. Continuing with the example above, it really is very simple. Let's say you decide to pare down a 48 number lottery to a 37 number play list with the aid of lottery analysis software. Not much of a bad strategy since you have eliminated 9,946,728 wagers from play! Since you are expecting 30% of the winning lottery numbers to be Longshots, you ensure 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 will not include Longshots. Serious lottery players everywhere use it. This is called playing the odds. Actually, that is what all successful gamblers do; play the odds.