Five years ago, a younger and more optimistic Karl, with dreams of cracking the European equivalent of the Powerball, formed a bold thesis:
“Surely the Eurojackpot isn’t truly random anymore. It must be calculated by a machine! And since machines are only capable of generating pseudorandom numbers, I could theoretically simulate the system long enough to identify patterns or at least tilt the odds in my favor by avoiding the least random combinations.“
This idea took root after I learned an intriguing fact about computers: they can’t generate true randomness. Being deterministic machines, they rely on algorithms to create pseudorandom numbers, which only appear random but are entirely predictable if you know the initial value (seed). True randomness, on the other hand, requires inputs from inherently unpredictable sources, like atmospheric noise or quantum phenomena—things computers don’t have by default.
My favorite example of true randomness is how Cloudflare, the internet security company, uses a mesmerizing wall of lava lamps to create randomness. The constantly changing light patterns from the lava lamps are captured by cameras and converted into random numbers. It’s a perfect blend of physics and computing, and honestly, a geeky work of art!
Technologies
- Python: The backbone of the project. Python’s versatility and extensive library support made it the ideal choice for building the bot. It handled everything from script automation to data parsing. You can learn more about Python at python.org.
- Selenium: Selenium was crucial for automating browser interactions. It allowed the bot to navigate Lotto24 and fill out the lottery forms. If you’re interested in web automation, check out Selenium’s documentation here.
I was storing the numbers in an SQLite database, don’t ask me why, I think I just felt like playing with SQL.
The Plan
The plan was simple. I researched Eurojackpot strategies and created a small program to generate lottery numbers based on historical data and “winning tactics.” The idea? Simulate the lottery process 50 billion times and identify the numbers that were “randomly” picked most often. Then, I’d play the top X combinations that showed up consistently.
At the time, I was part of a lottery pool with a group of friends, which gave us a collective budget of nearly €1,000 per run. To streamline the process (and save my sanity), I wrote a helper script that automatically entered the selected numbers on the lottery’s online platform.
If you’re curious about the code, you can check it out here. It’s not overly complicated:
Winnings
In the end, I didn’t win the Eurojackpot (yet 😉). But for a while, I thought I was onto something because I kept winning—kind of. My script wasn’t a groundbreaking success; I was simply winning small amounts frequently because I was playing so many combinations. It gave me the illusion of success, but the truth was far less impressive.
A friend later explained the flaw in my thinking. I had fallen for a common misunderstanding about probability and randomness. Here’s the key takeaway: every possible combination of numbers in a lottery—no matter how “patterned” or “random” it seems—has the exact same chance of being drawn.
For example, the combination 1-2-3-4-5 feels unnatural or “unlikely” because it looks ordered and predictable, while 7-23-41-56-88 appears random. But both have the same probability of being selected in a random draw. The fallacy lies in equating “how random something looks” with “how random it actually is.”
Humans are naturally biased to see patterns and avoid things that don’t look random, even when randomness doesn’t work that way. In a lottery like Eurojackpot, where the numbers are drawn independently, no combination is more or less likely than another. The randomness of the draw is entirely impartial to how we perceive the numbers.
So while my script made me feel like I was gaming the system, all I was really doing was casting a wider net—more tickets meant more chances to win small prizes, but it didn’t change the underlying odds of hitting the jackpot. In the end, the only real lesson I gained was a better understanding of randomness (and a lighter wallet).
Leave a Reply