Should you stick to the same retailer or should you buy from different stores?
Many retailers like to advertise when they sell a high prize winning lottery ticket. Doing so tends to generate more sales by the simple fact that some players believe that since a large jackpot was won at this retailer, another jackpot is just waiting to happen again. So we should buy all our tickets at that retailer, these people think, because it was lucky for the jackpot winner, and will also be lucky for us one day. Is it really to your advantage to buy your tickets at one retailer exclusively, or should you spread your lottery purchases around at different retailers to play tbe field?
Does One Retailer have all the Luck?
There are two, albeit very skewed, thoughts on where to buy your lottery tickets. If you buy them exclusively at one retailer, you are playing the odds in your favour because if a jackpot or large prize is won at that retailer, the belief is that the retailer has the “luck” to give to other players. Since it has already hit a large prize or jackpot, it would have to hit another jackpot or high prize again. It’s inevitable! On the other hand, if you spread your ticket purchases out around at many different retailers, you are covering your chances of winning a large prize because one of those retailers is obviously going to sell that big winning ticket and you want to make sure you’re taking advantage of the odds..
Both of these “systems” may sound like good things to do, but whether you play exclusively at one retailer or at several, the outcome is the same as when you play one set of numbers all the time verses playing new numbers for every new draw.
It's all Luck Really!
The odds, probabilities, and possibilities of lottery prizes are set in the lottery structure. Outcomes are randomly generated by balls in a blower or numbers in a computer. At retailer lottery machines, customers either pick their own numbers or can get the machines to randomly generate the numbers for them. Regardles of what numbers you play, every single number has exactly the same chance to be generated. With lottery retailers, every single retailer either prints tickets that customers have chosen or tickets with the randomly selected computer generated numbers.
Since the retailers have absolutely no control over the numbers printed on the tickets, and number combinations being generated by the live draw, and the big prizes won by players who bought tickets at various retailers, there is no way to determine what winning numbers will result and even less of knowing what retailer is going to sell it. Just because a retailer has sold one or more large prize winning tickets, does not mean that any more will be sold by that retailer. Every single retailer has the same equal chance of selling a high prize or jackpot winning ticket.
Since the odds of you winning any prize, even the jackpot, will not change whether you buy strictly from one retailer or from several for each draw, the odds of one retailer selling or not selling the jackpot won’t increase either.