Written by Ion Saliu on July 31, 2002.

• We can hear two divisive opinions:

1: "Lotto combination 1-2-3-4-5-6 has the same chance of being drawn as any other lottery combination. I play it religiously!"

2: "NO, NO, NO! Lotto combination 1,2,3,4,5,6 should not be played. It represents a weird arrangement of lottery numbers. Only fools can waste their money and play such a combination!"

It is the kind of issue that pits brother/sister-of-opposites against brother/sister-of-opposites, and enemy against foe...not to mention friend against lover. Incidentally, the combination 1-2-3-4-5-6 is played by thousands of lotto players worldwide in any conducted lottery drawing. Thusly, Super Crocodilule, if you win the jackpot, the value of the prize would be suicidaly worse than meager! If one hits the jackpot, one expects to turn into a never-work-for-others freak. If that's the goal, be advised to never play the statistically dreadful 1,2,3,4,5,6!

We was also opinionated in this regard. Let us start with the fundamental concept of 'probability'. If the lotto 6/49 has a total of 13,983,816 combinations, and only one is drawn as the winner, the probability is undeniably '1 / 13,983,816'. It is also expressed as ' 1 in 13,983,816'; or, as odds: '13,983,816 to 1' (even as '13,983,815 to 1'). The relations are mathematically valid. But the probability is rather an abstract concept. We can infuse more life into probability if we look at the probability as:

Expected successes in one trial.

This explains more clearly the requirement that the probability cannot be larger than 1. No event can have more than one success in one trial! Very logical — or is it, Super Crocodilule? NOT! Most people confuse probability for degree of certainty! You need read more (at this web site) on the essential distinction between probability and degree of certainty.

Successes and trials are real elements, not abstract concepts. All real-life random events are characterized by successes and trials. Real-life random events do not deal with simply one success in one trial. Life is a whole lot more complex than that.

I presented on one of my web pages (More Gambling, Lottery Analysis: Odds, House Edge, Fraud the reality of lottery combinations. In the pick-3 game, every combination has the same probability: 1/1000. Yet, some pick3 lottery combinations have come out ten or more times, while another combination waited for over 6000 draws to see the daylight! (Real case: combination 2,1,4 in Pennsylvania lottery.)

The discrepancy is much wider in lotto-6 games. The higher the odds (or lower the probability), the wider the frequency gap. I said previously that we were never ever to see equal frequencies in lotto games. Test it for billions of draws! I know, we were not built by beloved Mother Nature to live that long. But we can use computers to generate that many gazillions of combinations. Never ever will we see equal frequencies of combinations!

But what's wrong with a combination like '1-2-3-4-5-6'? Why shouldn't it come out even more frequently than combinations considered to be “more random”? For example, 3,17,28,29,34,47 is considered by many 'more likely to be drawn' because appears to be 'more random'. I think 'more random' has come to life as a result of statistical analysis of lottery draws.

It can turn into a very complicated debate. I will make it as simple as possible. The simplest way and the clearest method of proving or disproving is 'data analysis'. They say 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. Also, 'real data is worth millions of words'. I will add to analysis 6 more lotto numbers. That way, we can analyze real draws that occurred in our lifetime. Many lotto players also play combinations like 7,8,9,10,11,12. I saw with my own eyes a Jamaican lottery player (a farm worker in the US, as I was up until mid 1990's WEB…you gotta love everything you've been..) always starting his play card this way:

1,2,3,4,5,6
7,8,9,10,11,12

I will do the analysis for 12 "lotto" numbers: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. The combination '1,2,3,4,5,6' is in there. So, this is a huge favor I do to the 1-2-3-4-5-6 combo aficionados. But the cool-headed science geeks understand my act because science does always better than the hot-headed afflict. I will analyze a 642-draw data file in UK lotto 6/49 game. Look at the lottery combination '1,2,3,4,5,6'. The clearest way to look at it is 'position by position'. It strikes me that the number '6' in the 6th position is way too low. I compare it with all the data in the UK-6 lotto 6 drawings file.

I can do some sophisticated analysis using a tool such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Open the data file as 'Text only'. The spreadsheet application is intelligent enough to open it in the correct format (642 rows by 6 columns). Select column A. Select 'Data analysis' in the 'Tools' menu (an add-in), then 'Descriptive statistics' for the range A1:A642. The minimum value in the 1st position of UK-6 is 1; the maximum value is 30; the median is 6, the mode (the most frequent number) is 1. For column F (the 6th position), the results are:

- minimum value = 19
- maximum value = 49
- median = 45
- mode (the most frequent number) = 45.

A number such as '6' in the 6th position appears to be way out of range. So, what?, some may ask legitimately. Let's do an analysis, I would answer. I would generate all 924 lotto combinations for the numbers 1 through 12. Then I will generate combinations for the 3 most frequent numbers in UK-6 position by position.

I created a file with the most frequent numbers by position. The most frequent numbers are situated around the median of the respective position. The exception is position 1, where the first number is the most frequent. The median can be calculated by the Fundamental Formula of Gambling (FFG). Or, we can use the Excel median values for each column. The UK-6 draws history generated the following positional ranges:

1 2 3
13 14 15
22 23 24
29 31 32
37 38 39
45 48 49

The 6 positional ranges generate, in this case, 729 lotto combinations, from '1 13 22 29 37 45' to '3 15 24 32 39 49'. This is an easier situation, so the combinations can be generated manually. I use software to generate combinations based on positional ranges; thus, no errors are possible.

Very importantly, notice that the result files: WHEEL12.66 and POSIT6.3 are not equal in size. The numbers 1 through 12 generated 924 combinations. The positional ranges file generated 729 combinations. We might expect that the 1-12 file would hit 924/729 = 1.27 times more winners.