4 of 5 Hot Lotto white balls repeat within 3 drawings

If the Hot Lotto numbers drawn on May 16, 2012 looked familiar, they should have. The reason is that 4 of the 5 numbers picked that night were also drawn on May 5th, which was 3 drawings earlier.

Below are the Hot Lotto results for those two nights.  Notice that 4 of the 5 white balls were the same (5-16-19-39) and the 5th ball was only different by one (35 to 34).

Hot Lotto Results

Date	B1	B2	B3	B4	B5	HB
05/16/2012	5	16	19	35	39	11
05/05/2012	5	16	19	34	39	18

So yes, numbers to reappear and duplicate combinations can happen.

US Hot Lotto and UK Thunderball draw same five white balls on Saturday night

We often hear about the same numbers being drawn in various Pick 3 games, but it is extremely rare that two larger lottery games draw the same numbers. Even more rare is having the same combination drawn on the same night.

Well, that's exactly what happened on Saturday, August 20, 2011. First, the UK Thunderball white ball combination of:

6 7 11 22 33

was drawn. Then, a few hours later, the US Hot Lotto rolled out the same identical 5 white numbers.

We wrote about this rare event in our Bimonthly blog post: Same 5 lottery numbers are drawn on same night in two different lottery games.

But, we think this news is worth repeating in case you missed it!

Lotto 649 Draws All Hot Numbers

For the first time since we first introduced our Hot Cold Analysis pages in July 2009, the Canadian Lotto 649 game drew all hot numbers on Saturday, July 9, 2011. Not only were the 6 white balls classified as hot, but a hot bonus ball was drawn as well.  For that drawing, we identified 10 white balls as being hot and 7 hot bonus balls.

• Hot white numbers:  04, 07, 15, 23, 27, 31, 33, 36, 45, 48
• Hot bonus numbers: 05, 08, 22, 25, 29, 37, 39

If someone or group had played our hot white numbers, they would have purchased 210 total combinations. This would have cost C$420 and the lucky players would have collected the C$32 million jackpot prize. 


Since nobody won that night, the jackpot has increased to C$40 for Wednesday night.

Other games that previously selected our hot numbers were: California Super Lotto Plus, and Mega Millions (twice)!

Crazy Combo Trivia to ponder while waiting for the $218M Powerball Drawing

Two of our favorite lotteries drew unique crazy combinations the past few days that which we thought might interest you.

The first was Hot Lotto, whose numbers on Saturday, April 2, 2011 were:

16 20 25 28 34 and Hot Ball 14.

Looking at the deltas between these numbers, we find 04 - 05 - 03 - 06. When we move the Hot Ball to the beginning, we obtain a delta of 02 to the first number. Re-arranging these, we get a sequential delta series of :

02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06.

The second game was Texas Two Step which selected the 4 white ball series on Thursday March 31, 2011:

03 04 09 16

Looking at these numbers we find that the 3rd ball (09) is the square of the first number (03), and that the 4rd ball (16) is the square of the second number (04).

These are simply two more pieces lottery trivia that will keep you amused while you are waiting for the big $218 million Powerball drawing this Wednesday night.

Valentine's Weekend Drawings Reward Hot Lotto & 649 Players

In the weekend immediately before Valentines Day, our Lottery Power Picks brought early gifts to players in three different games.

On Saturday night, a Hot Lotto player won $50 by matching 3 of the 5 white balls plus the Hot Ball. In that drawing, we gave out only 160 combinations. Had more players requested numbers, two additional winning tickets would have been redeemed. Within the next 100 combos, there were two 4 of 5 winning tickets worth $50 each.

Also on Saturday, one Canadian Lotto 649 player matched 4 of 6 white balls and won C$62.60. Similar to the Hot Lotto numbers, we recommended 160 combos. In the next 100 combination batch, there were two more 4 of 6 matching tickets as well.

Lastly, one of our Euro Millions members won €23.20 in the Friday night drawing. That ticket matched 3 of the 5 white balls plus 1 of the 2 lucky stars.

Congratulations to all our lucky members and thanks for playing!

Full Wheel Payout Calculators to be Released this Week

During the past few months, we have been working on a series of Full Wheel Calculators specifically customized for each of our covered lotteries. As we are now completing the first group, we anticipate releasing these new pages for Mega Millions, Powerball, and Hot Lotto.

We are very excited about these since each provides a high level of user interaction. Players who are interested in wheeling subsets of numbers will be able to understand how much money they will need to spend to buy the wheel. More importantly, they will obtain immediate results about the potential winnings they may receive if they choose and wheel the correct numbers.

Stay tuned to this blog for our full release announcement during the next couple of days!

Hot Lotto Jackpot is Third Highest Ever

Image via Wikipedia

There has been 60 drawings since the last Hot Lotto jackpot of was last won on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010. That lucky winner was from South Dakota and won $10.02 million. 

This Wednesday's annuity is now estimated to be worth $15.9M. If won, this will be the 3rd highest payout since the game began in 2002. The previous record Hot Lotto jackpots are summarized below.

• The game's highest prize was $19.97 million and was sold in Iowa in the January 13, 2007 drawing.
• The second largest jackpot was won on August 22nd, 2009. The winning ticket was worth $16.94M and was sold in Delaware.

If someone wins this week, they will have the option to: take this $15.90M annuity and receive 25 payments of $0.636 million each; or to receive a cash payout of $10.28 million. Good luck to all during this Christmas week!

How to Win a Little Bit of Money in the Lottery

Our current development effort has been focused on calculating the amount of money a lottery player would win if they were to use a wheeling strategy. For those who wonder, a lottery wheel refers to playing all the possible combinations using a small subset of numbers. For example, if you select 7 numbers to be wheeled in a 5 number game, there would be 42 possible combinations.

Similarily, we can also utilize a varying amout of bonus balls (Mega Balls, Powerballs, Hot Balls) in our wheel. Supposing that you wish to wheel 5 bonus balls with the above example, there would be a grand total of 42 times 5 or 210 total combinations to be played.

However, we believe that spending $210 on a single drawing is a lot of money. So we wanted to see what would happen if we simply select 5 white ball numbers and wheeled the bonus balls only. The problem we encountered was : What five balls and bonus balls should we play?

For this, we decided to: select the first 5 white balls listed in our Hot and Cold Analysis, and obtain the bonus balls from the Hot Cold analysis as well. Then we applied this strategy to the Mega Millions, Powerball, and Hot Lotto games and reviewed the past 6 months drawings (26 total) to see is we won anything.  This is what we found:

• For Mega Millions, we used the white balls ( 2, 4, 10, 13, 20 ), and the Megaballs ( 9, 13, 18, 19, 25, 26, 31, 36, 41 ). This means we spent $9 in each game or $234 total. We would have had 3 ( 3-white + MB ) and 7 ( 1-white + MB ) winners, returning $660 back to us. Deducting the $234 that we spent, we would have profited $426.
• For Powerball, we used the white balls ( 7, 10, 16, 17, 20  ), and the Megaballs ( 13, 15, 20, 27, 30, 34, 39 ). This means we spent $7 in each game or $182 total. We would have had 1 ( 3-white + PB ),  1 ( 2-white + PB ),  5 ( 1-white + PB ), and 4 (  PB only ) winners, returning $181 back to us. Deducting the $182 that we spent, we would have lost $1.
•  For Hot Lotto, we used the white balls ( 1, 13, 14, 15, 26  ), and the Hot Balls ( 4, 6, 7, 15, 17 ). This means we spent $5 in each game or $130 total. We would have had 2 ( 3-white + HB ),  2 ( 2-white + HB ),  3 ( 1-white + HB ), and 5 (  HB only ) winners, returning $155 back to us. Deducting the $130 that we spent, we would have profited $25.

As you can see, we would have earned a profit on both Mega Millions and Hot Lotto, and would have lost only one dollar on Powerball.

Since each of these games allows us to buy a multiplier, we recommend that this be done in all cases. If we did, the Powerball would have returned a profit of approximately $179, Mega Millions $1,512 profit, and Hot Lotto $205 profit.

Three Lotto Max and Hot Lotto Winning Tickets

This past weekend's lottery drawings produced three very good winning tickets for our players.

First, on Friday October 22nd, one Lotto Max combination matched 5 of the 7 drawn white balls. The prize for that ticket brought C$121.50 back to our ticket holder.

Then, on Saturday October 23rd, two of our Hot Lotto combinations won prizes in that drawing. One ticket match 3 white balls and the Hot Ball, winning $50. The second ticket returned $500 as it matched 4 white balls and the Hot Ball.

Congratulations to those who held the three Lotto Max and Hot Lotto Winning Tickets!