When studying different patterns there are situations that come up that result in several possible patterns. The first pattern may occur more frequently but the odds are worse. The last pattern may occur less frequently, but the odds of picking the right combination are higher since there is a smaller number of numbers to choose from.
I see this a lot with Keno where the most common pattern may appear on average 2,200 times in the winning results, but the potential number of combinations is 41,409,225 while another pattern produces 552 winning combinations on average but the total number of combinations is 9,018,009.
Doing the math shows the smaller number as having the better odds. Despite what the math says I usually like going with the number that has more possibilities and then try to identify additional patterns within the larger set to get better odds.
I'm curious as to how others think about this issue when exploring strategies.