Lottery numbers greater than 31 are not popular. The natural tendency of many UK National Lottery players is to select the lower numbers. These are the 1 - 31 calendar numbers based on birthdays, anniversaries, children's ages and other special dates.

The fact is, you will greatly increase the amount you win several times over if you avoid the popular numbers and select the so called unpopular numbers. These include numbers 32 - 49, and those numbers ending in 1, 2, 8, 9 and 0.

You should avoid 'popular' sets like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, because if they appear there will be so many people sharing the pot that your lottery winnings will be very small.

Be careful how you "pair" lottery numbers together. Ideally, each pair should have 1 odd and 1 even number for maximum effectiveness. Also, don't pair lottery numbers from the same set of 10 - for example, ‘2 & 45’ plus ‘3 & 40’ works better than ‘2 & 3’ plus ‘40 & 45’.