Six consecutive ways to win the lottery

Lady Luck swung to the high numbers in last week's lottery, with 23 coming in as the lowest winner, and there were four winners from the forties. The previous week, there were three winners under 10 and five between 1 and 17.

Both results will please the reader who rang in to say he has devised a system based on covering 48 of the 49 available numbers in eight entries, each consisting of six consecutive numbers, such as 1-6 and 7-12 or 2-7, 8-13, or 49-44, 43-38 in reverse order.

He is struck by the fact that three winning numbers in close proximity often come up and he could well have scooped pounds 10 for an pounds 8 stake in each of the past three weeks.

My own "system" of backing combinations of numbers that have come up rarely was successful early in the year, but has not produced a win for several weeks now.

The graphic shows that the longest losing streaks now belong to 46, 20, 8, 10, 36, 39 and 13, while the worst performers to date are still 39, 13, 20 and 36, 3, 8, 10, 19, 24 and 34.

CLIFFORD GERMAN