The art of picking your weekly Lotto ticket is considered a timely matter for some players across the globe.
Whether you’re playing the Irish Lotto, EuroMillions or throwing your hat into the ring for the odd Powerball draw, the concept remains the same.
Superstitions have been passed down through lotto loving families and include sticking to a specific group of numbers, cultural beliefs, licence numbers and their dreams.
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No matter where you’re playing across the globe, the rules and number of chances are relatively the same, so here are some of the strange ways people across the globe pick their numbers:
Most commonly called
Many players go as far as to look up the numbers that are drawn the most in their country's lottery - which can be easily found online.
For example, in the Irish Lotto, the most commonly called numbers as of April 18 in order of frequency are 47, 10, 42, 38, 45, 14, 5 and 18.
Each number has an equal chance of being drawn, however, so it depends on how superstitious you are that they will all be drawn again.
Cultural reasons
Some players pick their number based on cultural customs, for example, the Chinese believe that the universe is run by two rules -Yin and Yang.
Yin belongs to humans which are even numbers, and Yang belongs to the Gods and is odd numbers.
Therefore some believe if you pick odd numbers then you will anger the Gods, so players will only pick even numbers on their lottery ticket.
Licence plate or number
There is a sense of luck to getting our first license or our first car, so many players vibe off this and opt to use their license number or plate for their lottery numbers.
This is actually a better option than choosing birthdays or anniversaries because they aren’t limited to being under a certain number.
Dreams
Some players claim to dream certain numbers up and then use these numbers to create a ticket for their lottery.
According to one man, it actually worked once in a lottery that took place in America called the Mega Millions.
An anonymous winner said he dreamt of the numbers to pick and used them and ended up winning a whopping $189 million.
Random picks
Interestingly, experts who have talked about the art of picking numbers think choosing your numbers randomly is the best option - because of the vast array of options.
This isn’t because it will increase your odds of winning, it is because it is less likely other players will have the same combination of random numbers.
This means if you do win, you have a better shot of winning the money and it’s likely with a lesser amount of other people, meaning you don’t have to share as much of the jackpot.
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