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Lottery wheeling

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Lottery wheeling is a method of arranging lottery ticket numbers in a way that will allegedly improve chances to win multiple-tier lottery prizes. Wheeling was designed for players who wish to play more numbers than the set required for a lottery ticket. Using mathematical formulae based on combinatorics, it generates tables that would give either full or partial coverage of all possible combinations of numbers a player selects for a lottery draw.

The probability of hitting the jackpot in a popular lottery is quite low. Most popular US lotteries have odds ranging from 1:176 million in Mega Millions to 1:11 million in the Michigan lottery to mention a few. Wheeling systems are intended to optimize the winning chances on smaller lottery prizes, rather than the jackpot. If some of the numbers a player wheels are present among the lottery's winning numbers, he will receive some of the lottery's second-tier prizes. Lottery Wheels were introduced in the 1970's and have, over time, become a less accepted method using statistics to win the lottery. Several "spin off" methods have since become popular, with mixed acceptance.

Full and Abbreviated Wheels are perhaps the most popular among different types of lottery wheels .

Full Wheel

Full Wheel includes all combinations that can be generated from a set of numbers a player picks. It is designed for the players who wish to obtain maximum coverage of numbers. If all of lottery winning numbers are in the group a player selects, he will win the lottery jackpot as well as additional prizes. If he only has some of the winning numbers in his set, he will be guaranteed to have multiple prizes.

In a famous occurrence, a Polish-Irish businessman named Stefan Klincewicz bought up almost all of the 1,947,792 combinations available at the Irish lottery. He and his associates paid less than one million Irish pounds while the jackpot stood at 1.7 million pounds. The syndicate did have a ticket with the winning numbers. However, so did two other players, and the jackpot was split three ways. With the "Match 4" and "Match 5" prizes, though, Klincewicz's syndicate made a small profit overall.

It is generally believed that full wheels are quite costly. A player who wishes to play with 10 numbers in the Pick 6 lottery game will get 210 combinations in a full wheel while to wheel 15 numbers in the same kind of lottery will give him 5005 combinations.

Abbreviated Wheel

An Abbreviated Wheel is an economical alternative for a Full wheel. Although it won't include all possible combinations of the chosen numbers, it will guarantee at least one winning ticket if a certain amount of numbers drawn fall within the wheeled number set.

A number of combinations in Abbreviated Wheel are significantly reduced compared to the Full Wheel. For example, Abbreviated Wheel for 8 numbers will only require 7 combinations. If 4 of the 6 winning numbers are among the 8 numbers player wheels, he will have at least one successful combination matching 4 winning numbers.

Filtered Wheel

Filters can reduce number of combinations in a Full or Abbreviated Wheel. For example, a filter can be set to remove combinations with all odd numbers, to include one or more player's favorite numbers in every combination, to balance the amount of odd and even numbers within the combination, etc.

Key Number Wheel

Key Number Wheel is a special case of Filtered Wheel. One or more numbers special to a player will appear in every combination of the Key Number Wheel. A player who wishes to win with a Key number wheel will need to match some of the numbers he plays with the winning numbers drawn.

See Also

References

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