I had some time tonight and was fooling around and decided to play around with the odds of picking a Pick 3 Lottery number. I wanted to see if there was some kind of system that I could devise that would make it profitable to play.  On the pick 3 lottery there are 333 box combinations and with a $1 box bet it pays $167.  There are a 120 single number combinations (123) that come up almost 70% of the time and the remaining double (122) and triple numbers (222) account for over 30% of the time.

At first glance I thought that I could play just the single numbers with a $1 box $120 x 1 = $120 investment. If it hit I would win $167 or $47 net profit. Not a bad profit for a $120 investment. The problem is when you lose. You lose $120 not $47. It would take you almost 4 more wins to recuperate that loss. Furthermore what if you lost 2 or more times in a row?

After searching the internet for a proven system, they all seem to come back to the one I listed above in some fashion or another. My conclusion is that the Lottery is not gambling but rather you are making a donation to the Lottery. You would win frequently but your loses would end up being greater than your wins. My advice - Don’t Play It. There is no such thing as a system and you can’t win systematically enough to justify the risk to dollars.