This has all got a bit repetitive, so just to go back to an earlier post, that I don't think anyone answered:
A punter has one go on every Saturday’s lottery, picking the same numbers each week based on the day and month of the family’s birthdays. Would the following strategies increase, decrease or make no difference to the punter’s chance of winning the Jackpot.
1. Pick a better spread of numbers as birthdays do not include numbers over 31, and at least 3 of the punter’s numbers must be below 13.
2. Have a lucky dip instead.
3. Pick the numbers that have been drawn out the most over the previous two years.
4. Pick the numbers that have been drawn out the least over the previous two years.
5. Pick consecutive numbers. (eg. 11,12,13,14 etc.)
6. Pick the same numbers that were drawn last week.
7. Use a random number generator.
and for advanced students:
8. Do not enter for 51 weeks then have 52 lucky dips in one draw at the end of the year.
1 to 7 all make no difference to the odds.
8 is the interesting one. If you can guarantee that the 52 lucky dips are all different then you have a better chance of winning. But that doesn't necessarily tell you what the best strategy is. For instance, playing every week, you could win on the first week, and so don't have to play any more, saving 51 entries. Or if you do play every week then you have a chance of winning more than once.
I think that if the 52 lucky dips you buy are independent, so in theory you could have more than one the same, then it makes no difference to playing every week.
Easy way to think of it is if there are only 52 numbers to be picked from. The chance of winning at least once over the year when playing every week is:
[1-(51/52)^52] = 0.64
If you just play once and buy every number that could come up then you are obviously guaranteed to win.