Consecutive numbers in Toto: how often do they come up?
Ask players to pick six "random" numbers and most will avoid neighbours like 17 and 18. Yet the winning numbers contain a consecutive pair far more often than intuition suggests. Here is the exact maths, checked against 688 real draws.
The maths: nearly a coin flip
Of the 13,983,816 possible Toto combinations, 7,059,052 contain no two consecutive numbers. That leaves 6,924,764 combinations — 49.5% — with at least one consecutive pair. (The count without neighbours is a neat result: it equals the number of ways to choose 6 numbers from 44, 7,059,052.)
What 688 draws show
| Pattern | Draws | Actual share | Expected share |
|---|---|---|---|
| No consecutive numbers | 376 | 54.7% | 50.5% |
| Longest run of 2 | 275 | 40.0% | 44.8% |
| Longest run of 3 | 34 | 4.9% | 4.5% |
| Longest run of 4 | 3 | 0.4% | 0.30% |
| Longest run of 5 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.01% |
| Longest run of 6 | 0 | 0.0% | 0.00% |
Consecutive numbers appeared in 45% of draws — a little under the 50% the maths predicts (binomial test p = 0.03). Runs of three or more appeared in 37 draws against about 33 expected. The shortfall in pairs is borderline: across the dozens of statistics TotoLab tracks, one or two will land this far from expectation by chance alone, and a draw machine has no mechanism for avoiding neighbours. We will keep checking as new draws come in. The practical point stands either way: consecutive numbers turn up in almost half of all draws.
Longest runs since 2020
- 31 Jul 2025 · draw #4100 71920212229
- 9 Jun 2022 · draw #3772 71415161738
- 23 Sep 2021 · draw #3698 93541424344
Why players avoid them — and why it matters
Consecutive numbers look patterned, so people tend to leave them out when picking by hand. That does not make them less likely to be drawn. It does mean that if a winning combination contains a consecutive pair, there may be fewer tickets holding it.
- Odds are unchanged. A ticket with 17 and 18 has the same 1 in 13,983,816 jackpot chance as any other.
- Sharing can change. Groups 1 to 4 split a share of the prize pool between all winning tickets. Combinations other people avoid can only help you if you win — they never improve your chance of winning.
- Wheels include them naturally. If two neighbouring numbers are in your pool, a wheel will pair them on some tickets. There is no reason to filter them out.
Related: odd/even and low/high patterns, which pairs of numbers come up together most.