We Tested 7 Lottery Strategies Against Every Powerball Draw

By Ryan · Published 2 November 2026

Hot numbers, overdue numbers, lucky numbers, birthdays... Everyone seems to have a system for picking their lottery numbers. And there's no shortage of websites promising one that works!

So we put 7 of the most popular strategies to the test, against all 1,427 US Powerball draws since 7 October 2015. Does any of them actually win more? Let's find out!

1. The rules
2. The strategies
3. The results
4. Why they all end up the same
5. The one thing that does matter
6. So, which strategy should you use?

The rules

Every strategy plays one $2 line in every draw, from the first draw with today's numbers to the latest. That's 1,427 tickets, or $2,854 each. They win the official prizes, from $4 for matching just the Powerball to $1 million for 5 numbers, and the Jackpot itself if they ever match all 6. We left out the optional Power Play.

And no cheating: each strategy only knows about the draws before the one it's playing, just like you would.

The strategies

• Quick Pick: new random numbers for every draw, like most tickets sold.
• The same numbers every draw: one set of numbers, picked once and played forever.
• Birthday numbers: numbers from 1 to 31 only, like the days of the month.
• Balanced numbers: a mix of odd and even numbers, and of low and high numbers. A favourite of lottery "experts", since a draw of all odd or all low numbers is rare.
• Hot numbers: the 5 numbers and the Powerball drawn the most in the last 50 draws.
• Overdue numbers: the 5 numbers and the Powerball that haven't been drawn for the longest. Surely they're due?
• Last draw's numbers: the winning numbers from the draw before.

The first four depend on luck: two players with the same strategy can pick very different numbers. So we had 1,000 players try each of them, to see the whole range of what could happen. The last three always pick the same numbers, so they only get one go.

The results

Here's how much each strategy won back from its $2,854. For the first four, we show the typical player, and the range from the unluckiest 5% of players to the luckiest 5%.

For a typical player, every strategy lost money, and by a lot: the best of them got back around 12c for every dollar spent. Overdue numbers came out on top with $329, and last draw's numbers did the worst, with $208.

So do overdue numbers work? Not so fast! Overdue numbers did better than 93% of our Quick Pick players, but that means 7% of players picking completely random numbers did even better. Just by luck.

That's the luck of the draw: two players buying exactly the same number of tickets can end up hundreds of dollars apart, depending on which small prizes they happen to win. Every strategy we tested sits somewhere in that range, right where luck alone would put it.

Why they all end up the same

The balls don't know about hot streaks, birthdays or what came up last time. Every combination has exactly the same chance of being drawn: 1 in 292,201,338 for the Jackpot. So every strategy, however clever, has the same odds as a Quick Pick.

On average, a $2 ticket pays back about 32c in prizes below the Jackpot, or 16c for every dollar spent. Over 1,427 draws, that's around $456. Yet the typical player in our test got back much less. Why? Because a good part of that average comes from the big prizes, like $50,000 for 4 numbers and the Powerball, or $1 million for 5 numbers. Most players never win one, but the few who do win big.

And some of our players did! The luckiest of them, playing the same numbers every draw, won $1,000,000 in a single draw. Not one of our 4,003 players won the Jackpot though. With those odds, you would need to play for around 1,873,000 years to expect to win it once.

The one thing that does matter

If no strategy changes your chances of winning, does it matter which numbers you pick? It does, but only for how much you would win. If you win the Jackpot, you share it with everyone else who picked the same numbers, and some numbers are far more popular than others.

Birthday numbers are the classic example: lots of people play them, so when they come up, there are more winners to share with. We looked into it in should you pick birthday numbers?, and our most common Powerball numbers page shows which numbers other players pick and avoid.

So, which strategy should you use?

Whichever you enjoy the most! Hot numbers, lucky numbers or a Quick Pick, they all have exactly the same chance of winning. If you'd rather not share a Jackpot, avoid the most popular numbers, and a Quick Pick does that for you.

Want to try your own strategy? Our free Powerball simulator lets you play thousands of draws with virtual money. And if you do strike it lucky, our Powerball payout calculator shows what you would take home.