There was a nice story (opens new window) about the 30th anniversary of the Lotto this week from Stuff. The article talked about how the fact some numbers come up more often than others is likely chance (Lotto take this seriously, and apparently regularly wash and weigh the balls to ensure there's no bias). The difference in frequency between the most drawn ball, number 1 (16.91%) and the least drawn ball number 34 (13.97%) is not huge, and I suspect the number frequency draws a bell curve.

The article also points out that a list of "lucky" stores doesn't take into account how many tickets the store has sold. The "luckiest" store appears to be in an area with a lot of rich retirees - Havelock North - so I'm not surprised that it would have a lot of winners.