I have spent small amounts on our national lottery several years back, but never won significant amounts (small "wins" only that required three correctly guessed numbers). I would never bet on a regular pattern though, because way too many people do and they all only get the fair share (proof: when on January 23, 1998 the drawn numbers were 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32 (we have to choose 6 out of 49 numbers, the forms arrange the numbers in a 7 by 7 grid, so these numbers looked very neat on paper) we had 222 winners who had all six numbers correct, each one winning the staggering sum of 84,803.90 German Marks; when on April 10th, 1999 the numbers were 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 26, more than 38K people had five of these correct and each of them won DM 194.24 - usually five correctly guessed numbers win a five-digit or even six-digit sum).