Lottery Superstitions

Lottery superstitions are those irrational yet surprisingly persistent beliefs and habits that we all have when we come to play Lotto, Euromillions or any other lottery game.

Although we all know that lotteries are pure games of chance, many of us continue to do things that we hope will, on some level, give us an extra slice of luck. In this article we take a quick look at three of the most common lottery superstitions so that you can, if you wish, adopt a new one for the next twelve months...

The Lucky Shop
Many lottery players are superstitious about the retailer they visit to buy their tickets each week. Most players simply adopt their nearest lottery retailer as their shop of choice, but some routinely buy their tickets from a more remote place because they previously bought a winning ticket from that shop when they happened to be passing. You may think that the idea of having a “lucky shop” is a tad unusual, but whenever the media report that a jackpot winning ticket was bought from a particular store, sales of tickets at that store tend to increase overnight – presumably because swarms of lottery hopefuls visit the same store in the hope that some luck will rub off on them.

Lucky Numbers
Because lottery games revolve around numbers, it’s not surprising that many players have one or more lucky numbers that they use when buying their tickets. Some have one specific lucky number that they enter on every ticket they buy. Others have a whole line of lucky numbers that they enter from week to week. Still others are so superstitious about numbers that they feel compelled to buy a specific number of tickets with specific numbers on each of them. Whatever the variations, it is likely that superstitions concerning numbers will be around for as long as lotteries are played.

Dreams
For some reason, lottery players tend to pay a lot more attention to dreams about lotteries than they do to any other type of dream. Whilst we can quite happily ignore dreams about the collapse of the economy and the end of the world, dreaming about winning the lottery are often taken as being a lot more reliable, so many of us rush out to buy a ticket if we haven’t already. Of course, the act of buying a ticket immediately improves our chance of winning (it’s now 1 in 14 million instead of zero) but should any of us get lucky after dreaming about success we’re sure to give credit to the dream rather than pure coincidence.

Whether we buy our tickets from a particular shop, play what we believe to be lucky numbers or act on dreams about lotteries, all of us have at least a pinch of lottery superstition in us. Whilst it’s extremely unlikely that such superstition does anything to help us win, it can make playing a bit more fun, so if you haven’t yet embraced your inner child and made a wish for a win, it might be worth doing so now. After all, it can’t hurt your chances, can it?

21st November 2007