Sportsbooks Now Allowing You to Bet on the Lottery – Odds on the Numbers Drawn and Whether There’ll Be a Winner

• With most sports leagues on pause due to coronavirus, sportsbooks are offering prop bets on various lotteries
• Get the odds for hot and cold numbers in Mega Millions, Powerball, and the New York Lotto
• See the types of bets available for lottery wagers and trends for “Hot” and “Cold” numbers, below

When it comes to choosing lottery numbers, we’ve all got our own strategies. The wheeling system, odds and evens, chalking our walls à la A Beautiful Mind, heck, even just our good ol’ lucky numbers sometimes feel magical. What’s great about using sports books with your strategy is that they’ve got the data to help you customize your bets.

More and more, lotto resources are calculating mathematical sequencing of “hot” and “cold” numbers. In fact, for those who are looking to base choices off past pulls, visiting websites from lottos like Mega Millions, Powerball, and New York Lotta can give you up-to-date data on numbers that are drawn more frequently, as well as those which are drawn less often.

Mega Millions

March 17 Drawing – The Gold Mega Ball Number

Odds as of  3/17/20. N.B.: odds for all numbers set at +2000.

Depending on the numbers’ frequencies of being drawn, we deem them hot, cold, or neutral, and plug them into frequency tables to help players better identify their classifications and to better decide how they might each fit into the breakdown of their selects.

Numbers are referred to as “hot” when they’ve come up the most in the past results, and they’re “cold” when they’ve been drawn the least. Draws are still posited to be entirely random. The organizations merely plug the numbers’ frequencies into distribution curves and use their standard deviations to suggest that they may be “hot” and, thus, likely to pop up again, or “cold” and due to re-appear after a long dormant streak. Of course, as temperatures go, those numbers resting somewhere in between are judged “neutral.”

March 17 Drawing – Will There Be a Jackpot Winner

Odds as of 3/17/20 10:00 PM  

Each resource you dig into calculates their statistics based on different time frames – some based on, say, the past 30 draws, as Mega Millions does; some pulling numbers since its very first draw in September 2009, as Lotto Max claims; and others give you your own buttons to segment out whatever timeframes your loot-seeking heart desires.

But what’s the nitty gritty? These outfits are already dangling such seductive numbers in front of you – on scratch cards, paper prints, and balls alike – does folding more figures into “facts” give you more solid grounds to chance your bets?

#DrawResults for 17/03/20 are:
#PowerBall: 16, 29, 34, 38, 49#PowerBall: 14#PowerBallPLUS: 11, 20, 22, 25, 50#PowerBall: 16 pic.twitter.com/yCemO6SUHD

— #PhandaPushaPlay (@sa_lottery) March 17, 2020

Some slights (*ahem* Mega Millions) claim they do. They scatter them across their pages like delectable bread crumbs, preaching their certainty, so much so, even Plain Jane Emma’s left gulping her bread and butter like the Queen noshes ostrich and cobra wine.

It's a few ⏰hours⏰ to go until the next $120,000,000 #Powerball Jackpot. Take a chance now and enter your lucky numbers for tonight's draw!!
Good Luck Players!!✌✌
See more> https://t.co/QowouPKUXw pic.twitter.com/6k51ToBcZq

— 24Lottos (@24Lottos) March 14, 2020

Powerball

March 18 Drawing – Red Powerball Number

Odds as of 3/18/20 10:00 PM – N.B.: All odds set at +2100 

Even third-party sources are serving out some real technical jazz, assigning “hotness” and “coldness” by weighting their statistical analysis between expected occurrences for numbers and their actual phenomenon deviations. They’ve got probability distributions and colour-coded charts. And we know just how thirsty we all are today for visuals.

Tonight is a night to shine with #Powerball's estimated jackpot of $110 Million!

Have you played your numbers yet? pic.twitter.com/Z4nyBwBh7Q

— Mass. State Lottery (@MAStateLottery) March 11, 2020

So, what gives? Does this data really serve as any indication for the betterment or worsening of a number’s performance? What if we contrast short-term with long-term? Will more time, more data points, more characters and symbols give us better knowing?

March 18 Drawing – Will There Be a Jackpot Winner

Odds as of 3/18/20 10:00 PM 

And, hey, the formats of games keep changing. Certain draws haven’t always maintained consistency with each of their numbers over the years. If these data-crunchers are truly able to normalize the variance from certain numbers having been “in the game” longer, perhaps there is some way for you to build a trusty set of neutral and hot numbers to benefit your odds of those profitable returns.

New York Lotto

March 18 Drawing – Bonus Ball Number

Odds as of 3/18/20 11:00 PM – N.B.: All odds set at +5000 

Well, statistically speaking – like, actually statistically speaking – the odds of a number popping up don’t change just because it has or hasn’t in the past.

March 18 Drawing – Numbers to be Selected (Excluding Bonus Ball)

Odds as of 3/18/20 11:00 PM – N.B.: All odds set at +800 

But what about serendipity? Coincidence? Fate? What’s even the point of any of this if we’re not going to lean into the magic of it all, the hopes of hitting the jackpots, of winning it big and riding those waves of bliss (or, you know, real ones in Morocco). Heck, who knows, maybe our minds are the powerful predictor and positive thinking really does have more than just hoo-ha goin’ for it.

A $1 MILLION winning ticket for last night’s #Powerball® drawing was sold in #CypressTX! #TexasLottery #Texas pic.twitter.com/pffjSyScGK

— Texas Lottery (@TexasLottery) March 12, 2020

March 18 Drawing – Sum of All Selected Numbers (Excluding Bonus)

Odds as of 3/18/20 11:00 PM 

So, if you believe in the ways in which we are able to convince ourselves, go ahead. Take these lucky numbers. The wizards have already pressed them through their kettles of gospel. Now, they’re yours for the venturing. Let’s see what happens.