To win more lottery prizes don't get put off by these weird number combinations

Everyone has their own theories about what numbers to use for their lottery tickets.

Some players will always include their birth dates, and remarkably some of those numbers have been in their jackpot.

Superstition often plays a part too, and helping that is the fact that the least drawn number in the history of the National Lottery is 13. It has been drawn only 229 times since 1994.

But generally, the chances of any special number affecting your win for good or bad are minimal.

That's because all draws start from zero... the combinations that come from any draw are not influenced by any other numbers drawn in the past.

All game numbers are random... you can't tell if patterns or numbers will repeat.

For example, these four consecutive numbers have been drawn on three occasions in the National Lottery.

The last time was on November 30, 2011, when the numbers were 13, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30.

And in a Florida lottery in 2011, these consecutive numbers were drawn: 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18.

In Bulgaria in 2009, the numbers drawn on live tv for the 6 September were 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42. Then amazingly the following week the exact same numbers were drawn again. The odds of this happening were calculated to be one in four million.

In the first draw, nobody won the top prize. In the second, however, 18 people guessed at the same numbers appearing again. Each won 10,164 leva (US$7,220).

An investigation was launched by authorities in Bulgaria after the second draw by the Bulgarian minister Svilen Neikov. Lottery officials called the repeated draw a freak coincidence.

You would think that if there was a pattern in the lottery it would do better than this!

The fact is, numbers are truly random. You can't add numbers in if they are 'hot' or 'cold' or are your birthday, and expect a better chance of winning.