Lottery wheeling is a method of arranging lottery ticket numbers in a way that will allegedly improve chances to win multiple-tier lottery prizes. Wheeling was designed for players who wish to play with a bigger amount of numbers than the set required for a lottery ticket. Using mathematical formulae based on Combinatorics it generates tables that would give either full or partial coverage of all possible combinations of numbers a player selects for a lottery draw.
Broadly speaking, probability to hit a jackpot of a popular lottery is quite low. Most popular US lotteries have odds ranging from 1:176 million in Mega Millions to 1:11 million in Michigan lottery to mention a few.
The objective of a wheeling system is to upgrade player's chances to win lottery prizes. Although it is important to note that wheeling does not give better chances than the same number of entries selected via any other method.
Wheeling systems do not intend to win the main jackpot of a lottery. They largely target at winning smaller lottery prizes. If some of the numbers a player wheels are present among lottery's winning numbers he will receive some of the lottery's second-tier prizes.
Full and Abbreviated Wheels are perhaps the most popular among different types of lottery wheels.
Full Wheel
Full Wheel includes all combinations that can be generated from a set of numbers a player picks. It is designed for the players who wish to obtain maximum coverage of numbers. If all of lottery winning numbers are in the group a player selects, he will win the lottery jackpot as well as additional prizes. If he only has some of the winning numbers in his set, he will be guaranteed to have multiple prizes.
In a famous occurrence, a Polish-Irish businessman named Stefan Klincewicz bought up almost all of the 1,947,792 combinations available at the Irish lottery. He and his associates paid less than one million Irish pounds while the jackpot stood at 1.7 million pounds. The syndicate did have a ticket with the winning numbers. However, so did two other players, and the jackpot was split three ways. With the "Match 4" and "Match 5" prizes, though, Klincewicz's syndicate made a small profit overall.
Abbreviated Wheel
An Abbreviated Wheel is an economical alternative for a Full wheel. Although it won't include all permutations of the chosen numbers, it will guarantee at least one winning ticket if a certain amount of numbers drawn fall within the wheeled number set.
A number of combinations in Abbreviated Wheel are significantly reduced compared to the Full Wheel. For example, Abbreviated Wheel for 8 numbers will only require 7 combinations. If 4 of the 6 winning numbers are among the 8 numbers player wheels, he will have at least one successful combination matching 4 winning numbers.
