Online, you can find a number of ebooks selling "can't miss" winning lottery strategies. While the people selling these systems may not be all-together dubious, they are scamming themselves if they think they're selling anything of substantial value.

All lottery systems fail -- this is a mathematical certainty.

To be clear -- I am talking here about lotto drawings, not scratch tickets. It is plausible to draw up a winning scratch ticket strategy -- though executing it would depend upon understanding and knowing the value of a range of unwieldy variables.

The key distinction between a lotto drawing and a scratch ticket lottery is in the type of numerical "sampling" employed. Whereas odds of winning can improve (and also worsen) from one scratch ticket to the next (within the same scratch game), odds in a draw-type lottery are constant -- due to "with replacement sampling".

This is the same reason roulette is unbeatable. Each time the wheel spins, there are 38 possible outcomes (37 on the European wheel), and the wheel (being inanimate) has no memory. One draw has no effect on the next.

Much the same, lottery balls have no memory -- and much longer odds than roulette. If roulette cannot be beaten, then a game with far longer odds is prohibitive indeed.

Why trust what I say here? Well, while my formal education is in the arts, I am an autodidact with games of chance. In fact, my self-taught knowledge in the casino has led to a little success in poker. (Google my name and have a look. Hopefully, I'll even have truly impressive success one day.)

You see, poker is a game of skill with an element of chance, thanks to "without replacement sampling" and the concept of "partially known information" (like seeing my cards and the shared board cards in Texas Hold 'em).

On the other hand, roulette, and especially lotto are games of complete chance, due to "with replacement sampling" and the impossibility of having any additional "partially known information".

That is why the world has quite famous professional poker players, but no professional lottery players. Playing lotto successfully long-term is mathematically impossible -- period.

In short, lottery systems and lottery ebooks are lottery scams.

Reg Brittain is a writer first, and writes on a range of topics. Read more of his work at http://hubpages.com/profile/Reg+Brittain