quick pick vs. your own numbers

i was wondering if someone could help me with this question...on things such as picking five numbers on state lotteries and also powerball,do people ever win picking their own numbers??  it seems like everytime i see a powerball winner even if its a 100,000 winner they always win with a quick pick.........just joined so hello to everyone

There have been numerous conversations about it...(use search icon on top of page).  Yes it is true that 70-75% of the winners use quick pick...only because 70-75% choose quick pick options......most of the big winners are quick picks because thats when alot more people buy a ticket or two on their way home, and you have alot more pools involved,,,if you look at the smaller jackpot prize hits you'll see thats its usually more people picking their own numbers....

When it comes to quickpicks . . .

There is no number of quickpicks you can buy that will guarantee a prize.

There is no number of quickpicks you can buy that must include all the numbers.

There is no number of quickpicks you can buy that will guarantee a jackpot not even if you buy 13.9 million of them for a 6/49 game.

On the other hand you can make your own luck with just one well chosen combination.  BobP

i think quick picks are good but i also think you have a good chance to if you pick a few numbers and play them over a period of time to see if they pan out or not.......

Talking standard 6/49 game.  If you buy ten quickpicks the hyper geometric distribution of numbers chosen by a random process suggests about one third of the numbers chosen will appear twice, one third once and one third not at all.

This means you will have about 36 of the 49 numbers amoung your tickets and when you play 36 out of 49 numbers you can generally expect to have 4 of the 6 winning numbers among them unless you have a process that accurately predicts winning numbers in a reduced field.  A jackpot isn't just unlikely, it's impossible !!!

If instead you make up a minimum number of lines using all the numbers, when the draw is held only six of the lines or less can contain winning numbers so in reality you are playing a 6/36 game with all the winning numbers among your lines. 

Now 6/36 is the worst you can do and of course you don't win anything, but it does show the true odds of the strategy sweeping millions of combinations off the table.  Once you have all the winning numbers among 36 the odds of having more then one of the winning numbers on a line are greatly improved, even of winning a jackpot.

Of course the overall odds haven't changed we had to toss some lines we paid for to get this improvement, but how many tickets are loosers to our winners anyway?  Better to toss a few to gain position then toss them for no value added.

Most people, software and systems can't predict winning numbers worth a darn so why bother when you can play all the numbers.  Turn the problem away from the impossible and study number positioning, gaps, how winning combinations are structured. 

Turning the mind to how often each number appears by position in the combination is far more productive then predicting them.  For example I know 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49 never appear in the first position and how often has 43? 

You find there are several kinds of drawings, some where the first number drawn is below 10, others where it is between 10 and 20 and fewer where the first is higher then 20, it isn't hard to see where a second set of backup lines should begin excluding 01-09.  Spend a little time looking at this history and it should start to make sense. BobP

i figure a nice blend of hand-picked sets and quick picks can't do you wrong.  the reason i use quick picks is that if the lottery picks the numbers "at random", then why shouldn't you pick a few numbers "at random".

when i first trie

Hmmmmmmmm,

Educated guess vs Dumb luck.

I do both on Supperlotto, 3 educated guesses and 1 dumb luck pick, just in case its my day.

I was using a trial program from Mike K's website a while ago that claimed to predict 5 ball numbers. Well i found it had terrible results for the next drawing, however, when i would try to predict 2 drawings away almost everytime one (or more) of the 20 or 40 lines would have 4 of the 5 numbers, i guess a big gambler could really profit from that, if it was consistent, it worked about 4 out of 7 times.

If you don't know how to pick your own combos, then by all means if you have to buy, then buy quick picks.

On the other hand, if you really know how to pick your numbers do so and never, but never buy quick picks, they would be just a waste of your money, well picked numbers will more often (but not always) do better.

putting it 50/50

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