Everyone wants to know the best way to win the lottery and for good reason. If you win a lottery jackpot you could be set for life. You may never have to work again or you may be able to go on that trip you’ve always wanted, or buy something special that you could never afford otherwise. That’s part of the draw of playing the lottery. But just how can you improve your odds?

Get a group

The best strategy that you can put together is to get a group together to play the lottery. When you play by yourself you have a set amount of money that you can afford to spend on tickets for each drawing. And whatever number of tickets that amount buys you is the number of chances that you have. So, if you can afford five tickets you have five chances to win.

If you work with a group of 10 people who all have the ability to buy five tickets then you’ve just increased your chances to 50. If your group is 20 people you now have 100 chances. You will win a smaller share of the prize the more people you get into your group, but isn’t a share of something better than all of nothing?

When you play online, look out for group tickets, often called syndicate tickets. Those are a larger number of tickets with preset number combinations. You can buy a share of those tickets, together with other players.

Play consistently

If you are trying to win you need to be consistent in your gameplay. It’s one of the best things you can do. Don’t buy a ticket one week and then skip a couple of weeks. You can’t win if you’re not actually playing the game. You may also want to be more focused on which games you’re playing and make sure that you’re playing the same games each week rather than jumping from one game to the next.

Remember, your goal is to get the best jackpot and you may or may not care which jackpot it is. Just make sure that you’re playing the game every time that it draws or you could miss out on your chance. Even if you don’t play set numbers every week, missing a drawing where someone wins can feel like you’ve missed your chance.

Mix hot and cold numbers

Hot numbers are ones that seem to draw frequently, more frequently than you would think. The cold numbers are the ones that draw less frequently. On the other hand, overdue numbers are ones that haven’t drawn in a very long time and should come up soon. By choosing some combination of these numbers you have a better chance of winning.

Choosing only hot numbers or only overdue numbers isn’t a good strategy and makes it statistically unlikely that you’ll win the jackpot. But choosing from all of the numbers together gives you a better chance.

The best thing that you can do to improve your chances of winning is to get yourself at least one ticket for each drawing and to make sure you’re continuing to buy those tickets regularly. You don’t want to miss out on a jackpot because you forgot to pick up a ticket this week.