Our team only plays the Multi-State Games around 15% of our spend.  Why? Lower tier prizes just have too big of odds. Take the MegaMillion.  In order to win 500 dollars, you need four balls with odds of 1 in 38,859 and that for a five dollar spend.  With the pick 3 game, you only have 1000 to 1 odds, for a dollar.

Sure we buy tickets, but we don't expect much.  What did the data tell us? There are patterns which all Multi-State lotteries have, divide the numers in half (35 in Mega, 34.5 in PB, 29 Millionaire for life and 26 in Lotto America). 

You will find the following six patterns; 0 below half, 5 above, 1/4,2/3, 3/2, 4/1, 5/0.  Data says that around 65% of these fall into the 2/, 3/2 range.  So on your wheels, you want at least half your picks to be in this category.  We also found out that DATA doesn't offer much help with these games, you need to have luck too. 

There are systems where hundreds to thousands of tickets are bought, but despite the hype, we haven't seen or heard of anyone winning jackpots with these...and winning the lower tier prizes, for the most part, is nothing to brag about. 

I will break these games down later in the month, but best DATA driven advice is, have a few tickets, but minimize your spend and try to cash in with better odds games.