HOW TO WIN THE LOTTERY

NUMBER CRUNCHING: THE STATISTICS OF SUCCESS

Never make selections based on birthdays. The reason is simple: no date contains a number above 31, thereby excluding 18 numbers in the draw and diminishing the chances of success.

Those aged 31-49 can improve their odds by including their ages as well.

Don't pick 13 - it really is unlucky, appearing just 154 times as a main ball in the Lottery.

And 16 performs equally poorly, while 41 and 20 do even worse.

The luckiest number in the Lottery is 38 with 206 main ball appearances, well ahead of the next luckiest number, 31, which has turned up 195 times.

A ticket comprised of the six best performing numbers in the draw would read 38, 31, 11, 9, 23, 25. But ...

Most popular combination over the past year is 3, 5, 7, 11, 23, 27. So if you win the jackpot with this ticket, you'll be splitting it an awful lot of ways.

Least popular combination over the past year is 32, 35, 37, 38, 43, 46. So if you win with this, you'll have it all to yourself! Until everyone rushes out and chooses it.

It is more efficient to buy 20 tickets for one Lottery draw than one ticket for 20 draws, presumably because you cover a greater spread of numbers.

Ensure your numbers add up to more than 177: according to a study of the Swiss lottery, this improves your chances, possibly because high numbers seem to be picked less often and therefore there are fewer winners to share with.

DON'T JOIN A SYNDICATE

Syndicates seem like a can't-lose proposition. But just ask a losing syndicate how much they spend a week on the Lottery. Spending, say, $50 to win a tenner split among 50 people  -  is this really such a smart idea?

...OR CHOOSE PRETTY PATTERNS

Lots of people like picking their numbers using arithmetical sequences, or arranging numbers in vertical lines, diagonals, clusters and so on. As a consequence, any prize you win will be shared.

...OR BUY A BOOK

If titles such as Take Advantage Of My Unique Method To Win On The Lottery, Exploit The Lottery And Win, The Truth Behind The Numbers, and Winning Lotto/Lottery For Everyday Players won jackpots for their authors, they wouldn't be spending their time writing books.

TIPS FROM WINNERS

DO WHAT YOUR MOM TELLS YOU:

Brian and Joan Caswell from Bolton started buying Lottery tickets because Joan's mother insisted on it when they went shopping on a Friday.

Even after she died, Brian carried on buying his tickets each Friday. And a jolly good thing he did, too. On Friday, June 12, this year, Brian and Joan won $24,951,269.40  -  their half-share of the Euromillions jackpot.

LET YOUR CHICKENS ROAM FREE:

Billy Gibbons won a jackpot after his pet chicken, Kiev, walked all over his calculator, generating a random selection of numbers which he then put down on his Lottery ticket.

Kiev was promptly renamed Lucky. Tragically, Lucky's luck ran out when Billy forgot to lock her coop and she was killed by a fox.

MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE:

Kerri Cartwright, from Port Glasgow, dreamt she'd won in January 2007. She remembered the dream while shopping at her local Tesco and with the money she saved on a 'buy one, get one free' offer, she bought a Lottery ticket for the draw that night. She won $2,543,691.

HAVE A SENIOR MOMENT:

In August 2007, absent-minded Derek Ladner, 57, from Gloucester, and his wife Dawn had one of the five winning tickets that shared the $2,395,710 jackpot.

A week later, however, Derek remembered that he had bought another ticket, with exactly the same numbers, for the same draw.

So he and Dawn collected another fifth of the jackpot, bringing their total win to $958,284.

THINK LIKE A BOFFIN:

For years, a syndicate of 17 professors from Bradford University and College had been trying and failing to win the Lottery by simply choosing their own individual lines of numbers and then hoping for the best. It didn't work.

Eventually, they decided to use their brains to come up with a winning scheme.

According to syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse: 'We weren't winning with the numbers being picked. So we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used. We stuck with the numbers and knew we would win - eventually.'

In October 2006, having spent $3,536 on losing tickets, the syndicate hit paydirt and picked up a $311,700 win.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS. TRUST IN THE COSMOS:

Noel Edmonds lifted himself back to the top of the TV ratings thanks to Deal Or No Deal. And the reason he gives for his success is 'Cosmic Ordering', a New Age philosophy proposed by German author Barbel Mohr.

The idea is that the cosmos is ordered by a 'universal intelligence'. And if you ask nicely, this intelligence will give you what you want. All you have to do is: 1 Write Down Your Desires: So, 'I want to win the jackpot on the Lotto draw this Saturday.' 2 Visualize Your Success: Close your eyes and feel that winning ticket. 3 Have Faith: The more you believe your win will happen, the better the chances it will. 

CHECK YOUR NUMBERS:

It sounds stupid, but you may have won the Lottery and you just don't know it. Right now, the May 16 jackpot of $1,316,462 - won by someone in Croydon, South London, with a ticket of 1, 5, 9, 27, 42, 45, bonus ball 21 - has yet to be collected.

Someone is walking about as a millionaire - and doesn't know it.

You can have all the clever systems in the world. But if you don't check your numbers, you might as well not enter at all.