Lucky day or unlucky day, if Friday the 13th divides the superstitious, it in any case delights game of chance managers, like casinos which see their attendance increase. The same goes for the FDJ, which organizes the lottery, and declares between two and three times as many players on Fridays the 13th. This Friday, December 13th, therefore, as every time, 13 million euros are up for grabs. Many players will therefore try their luck and choose six numbers to check.
You have to go back to Friday May 13, 2016 to find a jackpot winner on Friday the 13th. That's nine draws without a big winner since.
Over the last 10 years, 15 Friday the 13th draws have been carried out, for seven big winners, including five in the same edition, on February 13, 2015. On average, there have been 0.46 big winners per Friday the 13th draw since 2014. For the classic draws, the average is 0.22 winners per draw. If we base ourselves on these figures, there is therefore a higher percentage of big winners on Friday the 13th, but this exceptional draw from February 2015 distorts the statistics somewhat.
Whatever the date, the chances of everyone winning are the same in each drawing: each player, regardless of the numbers chosen, has a one chance in 19,068,840 of having the six correct numbers.
If some leave it to chance, letting the computer decide (the 'flashes'), others have particular techniques. From the simplest, with lucky dates, to some more elaborate. Some turn to pseudosciences like clairvoyance or numerology. Others believe that it is possible using algorithms or tables to predict which numbers will be drawn.
One of these techniques is to analyze the prints to try to spot patterns, figures or numbers that would fall more often. And this is the case of the FDJ itself, which publishes on its site the ranking of the numbers drawn the most and the least often.
The company makes it clear, however, that if certain numbers do indeed come back more often, this in no way indicates a higher chance of them being drawn. Each player has, whatever happens, the same chance of being drawn, i.e. one in fifty.
Rather than trying to predict the result of the draw, some people just have original ways of choosing their numbers. And sometimes, it works: a mother-daughter duo, for example, won 10 million euros in September 2020 by letting chance do the talking. They had written all the numbers on small pieces of paper, and drew them at random. Still in 2020, and more original: a man won 13 million euros by playing… the numbers of the first barcode he saw.
