If you are looking for ways to improve your odds of winning the lottery, there are no guarantees, but there are some pointers and tips that could help.

A mathematics professor in the United States of America, for one, has suggested not to pick lottery numbers based on anniversaries, birthdays and other landmarks in life. Instead, professor Dennis Runde of the State College of Florida recommends keeping selections random.  

"Truly random is very difficult for the human being to do without help. I just picked the number three, for example. So, if I went to buy a ticket today maybe that'd be a good way for me to pick my Powerball number. And 11 followed by 12 - sure, that's random," said Runde.

His opinion flies in the face of those who prefer to be in control of their number choices and plays right into the hands of quick-pick functionality. So be it. Take it or leave it. 

There are other stronger options, too. Entering a lottery that happens three tismes per week rather than, say, once or twice, increases the number of times in any given seven-day period you can win. The French Lotto is a good example of a lottery that is drawn at the start, in the middle and toward the end of the week.

At Lottoland, one could improve their chances of winning by playing lotteries with better odds - such as the Irish Lottery online where you can bet on the outcome of each draw. The chances of winning the Irish lotto jackpot are approximately one in 10.7 million. The odds of winning the prize one tier down from the jackpot are about one in 1.8 million. The probability of winning any prize in the Irish Lottery are around one in 30.

Interestingly, the Irish Lottery is right up there with other global draws when it comes to the best odds of winning the jackpot. It is flanked by the Austrian Lotto and Polish Lotto, which have jackpot odds of one in eight million and one in 14 million respectively.

The Irish lotto is drawn on Wednesday and Saturdays. To enter, one simply has to select six numbers of a pool of 1 to 47. The jackpot is won if all six numbers are matched correctly.

Knowing which numbers have been drawn the most and the least in the Ireland Lottery can make for interesting reading. A quick look at the bracket of September 2015 to August 2022 shows that the digit 27 has been drawn the most - 121 times. It is followed closely by 29 and 47 with 109 times each. Numbers in the teens - such as 15, 16 and 18 - have all been drawn 100-plus times each.

In terms of the least frequent numbers drawn in the Irish Lottery, single digits 1, 4 and 6 have gone for several months at a time without being drawn in the past. Intriguingly, perhaps largely due to its unfortunate stigma, 13 is among the numbers least picked by those who enter the Irish Lottery.