Do Quick picks win more jackpots?

Two people won the Millionaire for Life jackpot in Ohio this year. The September winner in Maple Heights let the terminal choose (quick pick numbers). The April winner in Cleveland filled out a slip with their own numbers. So that got us thinking if Quick Picks or manual numbers win more jackpots.

A ticket's odds do not depend on where the numbers came from. Any five white balls plus a Powerball is 1 in 292,201,338, whether a terminal generated them, you picked them off your family members birthdays, or you played 1-2-3-4-5. Quick picks take most jackpots for the same reason most jackpot winners buy at convenience stores. That is how most of the tickets are sold. If quick picks are 70% of sales, they collect about 70% of jackpots.

The wrinkle

The one argument that is not superstition goes like this. People who pick their own numbers use dates, so they crowd a lot of numbers into the 1 through 31 range (max days in a month). If the drawn numbers happen to land in that range, more tickets match, and the jackpot gets carved up. You would not win less often. You would win less money when you won.

So the practical answer is short, Quick Pick numbers win more often simply because they're how most lottery tickets are sold. Ultimately, pick however you like. The one consideration that survives scrutiny is that if a lot of people share your numbers you would share the prize, which is what happens when two or more tickets match, and avoiding dates is a cheap hedge against that. Everything else about hot numbers, cold numbers, and lucky terminals is covered in our test of the common superstitions and in the frequency tables. Both are interesting to read so check them out.