Why Joining A Lottery Pool Is One Of The Best Ways To Increase Your Winning Odds

Who doesn't have dreams of winning the lottery? While the odds of doing so aren't exactly in your favor, there are strategies to consider that can raise your chances of winning. Some of these ideas include a 70% rule to improve your odds of winning the lottery and statistics suggesting how often you should buy lottery tickets to increase your chances of winning. One less-frequently-discussed tip is how co-operation and a communal outlook can actually benefit your lottery winning odds.

There are multiple stories of lottery winners around the world scoring huge jackpots with co-workers, neighbors, friends, and family. In 2018 for instance, CNBC reported on 11 co-workers in California shared a $534 million Mega Millions prize, and while we don't know if there split the $320.5 million after-tax lump sum or not, it turns out there may be something more scientific happening in situations like this that can also raise your chances of winning the lottery too.

Consider pooling your resources together with a group of friends in smaller lotteries. For instance, the Mighty Millions Raffle in Colorado for the Children's Hospital of Colorado offers a ticket package for $850 that includes 10 tickets. Your odds of winning a prize are one in 29, and where the Grand Prize Showhome is concerned, one in 117,000. Ten tickets obviously affects those chances greatly. You could go even smaller with your raffle however, by trying the same strategy with local schools, church raffles, or even community centers where tickets are limited to anywhere from 100 to 1,000.

If you want the big money, think about playing games with better odds for your group. For instance, if you and a group of 10 people pooled your resources together, the difference between the 10 in 302,575,350 odds of winning the New York Mega Millions, and the 10 in 10,000 odds of winning the New York Win4, are fairly obvious. Now, your jackpot is much smaller — $5,000 versus the $110 million of the Mega Millions — but your odds of winning are significantly higher. While it would be more fun to divide $110 million between 10 people than $5,000, a win is a win. If your group goes for the big money, there are certain numbers that some people think may improve your chances of winning the lottery.

Sometimes, less is more, but that's not necessarily true when it comes to winning the lottery. For example, if you purchase a single lottery ticket where random numbers decide the outcome, and include input from several people who provide you with their numbers, it won't significantly raise your chances of winning. That's because random winning numbers on a single ticket could be chosen by any one lucky individual using their dog's birthday, in any five number sequence, which makes this sort of scenario a total game of chance more than anything else.

The other side of that, where you buy several tickets with a group of people in hopes of raising your chances, is also a bad idea. If you consider for a moment the odds of winning the New York Mega Millions on a single ticket could be one in 302,575,350. So mathematically speaking, a group of five people buying into a Mega Millions ticket should raise your chances to five in 302,575,350. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), your odds of being struck by lightning in any given year are just less than one in a million. In other words, you are just over 302 times more likely to be struck by lightning this year than you are to win the Mega Millions, even with five people pitching in on a ticket.