Has the same group of three Lotto Max numbers come up again?
Of the 22,100 groups of three that the Lotto Max pool allows, 17,737 have been drawn at least once and 4,363 are still waiting, where chance predicts 4,377.
The most any one group has managed is eleven times, and one group has done it. Most of the groups the pool allows are on the record already, which is what makes a tally worth reading at all. Each draw holds 35 groups of three, which makes 44,765 drawn in all, spread over 22,100 slots, so the repeats are arithmetic rather than a pattern.
What was measured 35 groups per draw
A group of three here is simply three of the pool's numbers, in no order. Draw 1279 was 01111336414351, and 011113 is one of the 35 groups of three it holds, because any three of its numbers make one. Counted that way the record has drawn 44,765 groups across 1,279 draws, and the pool allows 22,100.
One named group sits inside one draw with probability 35 in 22,100, or about 15.8 chances in ten thousand at the pool of 52. That rate has not held still, because this game has drawn from three pool sizes, 49 then 50 then 52 numbers. A wider pool allows more groups, so the rate has fallen from 19.0 chances in ten thousand to 15.8, and a group that needs 52 to exist has had far fewer draws to appear in than one that could have turned up from the start.
Sorting the groups by their largest number is what keeps that straight. There are exactly C(m − 1, 2) groups whose largest number is m, and they were available in precisely the draws whose pool reaches m. Since the pools read here only ever grow, all the groups that became available at the same pool size share the same run of chances, so they can be taken together in three bands, one per pool size. Every prediction on this page is a sum over the draws that could actually have produced the group. Raw counts alone would rank the groups by how long they have existed rather than by how often they have turned up.
The record 22,100 groups, 13 rows
Red marks a figure outside the range ordinary variation produces
| Times a group has been drawn | Chance | Groups |
|---|---|---|
| Never | 4,376.919.80% | 4,36319.74% |
| Once | 4,784.121.65% | 4,78321.64% |
| Twice | 5,159.223.34% | 5,16623.38% |
| Three times | 3,912.117.70% | 3,96717.95% |
| Four times | 2,246.810.17% | 2,1779.85% |
| Five times | 1,037.34.69% | 1,0814.89% |
| Six times | 400.11.81% | 3871.75% |
| Seven times | 132.40.5991% | 1170.5294% |
| Eight times | 38.360.1736% | 400.1810% |
| Nine times | 9.880.0447% | 160.0724% |
| Ten times | 2.290.0104% | 20.0090% |
| Eleven times | 0.480.0022% | 10.0045% |
| Twelve times or more | 0.110.0005% | 00.0000% |
Each row is a number of appearances and how many groups have exactly that many, beside the number chance predicts and the share of all 22,100 groups it comes to. The predictions add up to 22,100 exactly, so the table compares the shape of the record against the shape chance predicts and not its size. The biggest row in the record is the groups drawn twice, and chance puts the same row first. Counted as appearances instead of groups, 44,765 groups were drawn and 17,737 of them were different, so 27,028 appearances were repeats where chance predicts 27,042. One row here gathers several tallies at once, every tally of twelve or more, so it is bound to be larger than its neighbours for that reason alone. The record reaches further than chance predicts: the furthest tally chance predicts at least one group for is ten times, and the record has a group at eleven times.
Nothing in the table is printed in red, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. The groups are not independent of one another: one draw lifts 35 of them at once, and they share numbers. Expectation is still exactly additive, which is why every prediction above is exact, but the spread of those counts would need the covariance between groups that share numbers, and that is not honestly available here. A range would have to be invented, so none is given. The figures on this page that do carry ranges are read a different way, draw by draw, in the next section.
The one exception above is the fourth figure, the groups held from one draw to the next. That one is read from pairs of draws taken one after another, and because the draws are independent of each other its prediction and its range are both exact. Across the 1,278 pairs of draws read one after another, 70 groups have been held over, where chance predicts 81.49, which is 0.89 standard errors below it.
| Largest number in the group | Groups | Chance waiting | Waiting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 49 available in 1,279 draws | 18,424 | 1,788.59.71% | 1,8309.93% |
| Exactly 50 available in 776 draws | 1,176 | 297.125.26% | 29024.66% |
| From 51 to 52 available in 55 draws | 2,500 | 2,291.391.65% | 2,24389.72% |
The same groups split by their largest number, which is the same thing as splitting them by when they came into existence. The first band has been available for every draw read, the last one only since the pool reached 52. The share still waiting is 9.93 in a hundred in the first band and 89.72 in the last. Chance predicts the bands to part company in exactly that way, because a band with fewer draws behind it has had fewer chances, and the third column is that prediction worked out over each band's own run of draws. This is also why raw tallies cannot be ranked against each other without it: a group that has only existed for 55 draws is being compared with one that has had 1,279.
At the far end, here are groups that reached the record high of eleven times drawn, with the draws that held them.
Chance predicts 0.6 groups drawn eleven times or more and the record has 1. Nothing here is printed in red, and that too is deliberate: these groups were picked out for being the most drawn, so marking them as unusual would only repeat how they were chosen. The highest of 22,100 tallies is above the average by definition, and the honest reading of it is the pair of figures just given.
Read draw by draw how much of a draw is already on record
The same record read the other way round. Going into a draw, some number of groups are already on record, and the draw lifts 35 groups of three, some of which may be among them. That count has an exact prediction, the groups on record multiplied by the chance of any one of them being drawn, and an exact range, because a draw's prediction is read off the draws before it and never off itself. So the differences from draw to draw do not lean on one another: they add up, and so do the variances.
A single draw's count is lumpy rather than smooth, because its groups of three overlap each other: numbers that have often been drawn together before bring several old groups in at once. The most any one draw has carried is 35, in draw 917, where the prediction for that draw was 27.94. That figure carries no red mark, because the highest of 1,279 draws is above the average by definition.
The record had to start from nothing, and a draw can only repeat what came before it. Across the first 100 draws read, 310 of the groups drawn were already on record against a predicted 308.1. Across the last 100, that figure is 2,879 against 2,906.6, which is 0.57 standard errors below it. The rise between the two is the record growing, not the draws changing.
Groups per draw already on record, one point per block of 20 draws
result for the blockrange ordinary variation allowsoutside that range
Oldest block on the left, newest on the right. The band is what chance predicts for those same draws, worked out from each draw's own pool and from the groups that were on record going into it, and a point outside it is marked. No point sits outside the band here. Across ten blocks, chance alone puts 0.5 of them outside, so a point outside the band would not be explained by the number of blocks read.
Applied to this draw draw 1279 · 2026-10-16
Draw 1279 was 01111336414351 from a pool of 52, which holds 35 groups of three. Of those, 23 had been drawn before, where chance predicted 28.07, which is 0.86 standard errors below it. That leaves twelve groups here that the pool had never produced until now.
The groups in this draw with the longest records, counting this draw.
That list starts at the top of the 35 groups this draw holds, so its first line is where a sorted list has to begin rather than a group that is owed anything, and it carries no red mark for the same reason.
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