Recently a paper submitted to arxiv.org Combinatorics category came to my attention. (also under Annals of Pure and Applied Logic): "Distances between the winning numbers in Lottery" written by Konstantinos Drakakis and published in  16 March 2005

It provides a rigorous proof about Lottery (using Pick 6 game as a model): the winning 6 numbers (out of 49) in the game of the Lottery contain two consecutive numbers with a surprisingly high probability (almost 50%).

Almost 50%  still gives house an advantage, but is sufficiently large enough that it can not be ignored in generating prediction mumbers as in almost one game out of two the winning set of numbers contains two consecutive ones.

One simple strategy is to keep track of consecutive numbers in n-draws and calculate probability and predict accordingly according to the 50% rule.

Very recent draw in New Jersey Pick 5 game on April 1, 2009 with winning numbers: 11-12-13-25-33, prompted me to investigate consecutive numbers and look for some formal paper on the subject, the almost 50/50 chance of it occuring came as a big surprise to me...

References:

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/math/pdf/0507/0507469v1.pdf           Distances between the winning numbers in Lottery by Konstantinos Drakakis

https://www.lotterypost.com/thread/189933/6                             Lotterypost thread of a draw in New Jersey Pick 5 game on April 1, 2009