the seniors probably have those superstitious belief. there were people who sometimes hear something on TV or combine the birth dates of their children to bet on lottery. people are hopeful to get the instant money but there are times where there are multiple winners in our lottery, it must be true and not rigged.
i'm not sure if there is a trick to it that the city can program numbers to come out but in my country we use the Air-Mix Lottery Machine where numbers are on table tennis balls.
Having tricks in lottery might be really happening but only the operators have known it well. And gamblers just continue betting with their favorite numbers, either its from their dreams or any superstitious beliefs, I guess they wont stick to it if it werent working after all. And as much as lottery gambling is legal and games are not rigged, enough reason why a lot of gamblers still pursue in lottery despite of a very small winning odd.
Because there were and still are reports of winners using their favorite combinations or signs of numbers they saw in their dreams so don't expect people will stop using all the various means of obtaining their numbers to bet, they are not proven formulas but they believe there are heaven sent signs that you just need to decipher to obtain the numbers to bet, because with all honesty we do not have the right formulas on how to win in a lottery, it really is a luck based game.
There are also people who take care of the same number combination for years and continuously bet without changing it. This year, we had hundreds and lottery winners with the same weird number combination which is all divisible by 9. Maybe that's one of the reasons why people still believe on their personal superstitions and mantra. They still have hope for what they believe.