Waiting list indian railways?

In each train, the seats are allotted to different railway zones based on some hidden criteria. In each railway zone, the major cities get some quota based on some other hidden criteria. And, there are different waiting lists like, (General) Waiting List, Pooled Quota Waiting List, Remote Location Waiting List, Request Waiting List etc., which are not trivial to understand.

Also compared to long journeys, short journeys have more chances of confirming as they have less WL status. This can help you to get a confirmed ticket.

** Prediction of confirmation of WL tickets is a very difficult task. Still the only thing I can suggest about the chances of the waitlist coming down, is to check how many berths are available for the total quota (look at availability for 120 days ahead), then look at booking patterns (look a week/month ahead, see if many more tickets are being sold on that day of the week/group of days), see if there are any holidays/festivals around your time of travel, see how the waitlist moves in the last week or few days (other days, not your day of travel, see if any pattern emerges), and if your really concerned, go to the departing station and have a look at the reservation chart of the same train, have a look at the final movements to get an idea whether your ticket can get confirmed...

Look, an interesting analysis-

if you book your ticket in a long distance train with lots of stops in between, the higher the chance that your ticket would get confirmed. The logic goes like since many station would be accommodated in a constant number of seats, there would be more chances of GAP arising between any two pair of stations.

Please remember, your distance of travel must not be on higher side preferably < 500 Km in 2000+Km run. You can check the live status of your PNR below-