Lottery software filters – A personal tale
Written by Nik Barker on October 10, 2001.
I first came across Ion's site in February this year (2001). I read EVERYTHING. I found it both interesting and perplexing. Mathematics was one of my good subjects at school, but I had no grounding in statistics, so, many things I read on the site were perplexing.
Perseverance is the key. I re-read and re-read and gradually understanding came in occasional moments of pleasure. But still the filters were bothering me. What were they all about? What did they mean? How could I understand them and what was I supposed do with them? I noticed from reading other people's posts on the message board that they too were finding the concept and interpretation of the lottery filters hard to understand. Many, in fact, were asking point blank…”Ion, I need to know WHAT the filters MEAN” (or words to that effect). They wanted something for nothing, an easy answer, the truth with no effort. That is not a criticism. We are all human. The human way is to seek the maximum gain by the path of least resistance and minimum effort. Most of us have jobs. Some of us like them and others don't. But ALL of us would rather be able to do less and be paid more.
There are no quick fixes in life. Sooner or later life evens the score. I admit that I too would have loved a quick-fix explanation for the lottery filters, but receiving an explanation is not the same as understanding it. Indeed, I even e-mailed Ion to question his comments that it was not necessary to understand what a particular filter's purpose was to be able to use it. Part of my question to him was…”Surely to be able to set a value for a lotto filter one must understand what that filter does, what part of the data it is looking at…” otherwise there is only ignorant guesswork going on.
I want to say at this point though, that my experience of 'understanding' what I am doing is still in it's infancy. I am a novice, I have no great words of wisdom, but I want to share the progress I have made with you….the same progress you can make as well if you keep saying 'I can'.
Recently, in a moment of enlightenment, I did realise that it IS NOT NECESSARY to understand what a filter does. Where did this enlightenment come from? It came, quite simply, from looking yet again at what was in front of me all along. The W6 reports. Like so many other visitors to this web site (I presume), the first time I laid eyes on my W6 reports I was dumbfounded. All those numbers! I quite like numbers, well, those I understand anyway! But these made no sense to me. I was faced with a choice. I either seek to understand them, their significance, or I don't. That same question faces all of us.
The unknown is inherently uncomfortable for most, scary even, but it is something that we all have the choice to either face and overcome, or to run away from. We must all have an example of some kind of 'fear' that we have overcome. How did overcoming that fear make you feel? It sure didn't make you feel worse about yourself! So what are you going to do now? Look at your W6 lotto software reports again and re-read all the information there is available to you on the message board…or, of course, you can just run away from the thing you don't understand and go back to your desk job and tear up the piece of paper you've been keeping all this time titled 'What I'd buy if I won the lottery'.
In the most recent draw of the UK National Lottery I played three lines. They were the only three lines generated by POWER632 given the filter values I entered. I DIDN'T use BEST6, LEAST6, or MOST6. I didn't win either! But I was close.
There are a possible 80 (including MIN AND MAX where relevant) filter settings to input when running POWER632 lotto software – 20 in each Layer. A staggering number! Where does one start? First and very importantly, you only need to give values for very few filters, (but these obviously have to be somewhat based on understanding!). Personally, for example, I would shy away from inputting a lottery filter value for ALL because so often (more often than not) at least 1 number from the previous draw, was repeated in the next draw. Look at your W6 report for the TWO filter in Layer 1. On mine it has a Median of zero, an Average of zero (!), and a Standard Deviation of only 2. But then again, there will be instances where it is 'right' to set a filter value for it.
There is so much other information on the message board already. For example: looking for occurrences in a particular filter where there have been three increases in a row, or three decreases in a row. The probability is that in the next draw that value will go in the other direction. So, for instance, if your THREE filter in Layer 1 has gone 8+, 10+, 22+ in the last three draws, you could leave the MIN value alone altogether but set the MAX value of THREE to 22. That is just one example though.
Have you looked at the FIVs and FIVr filters? You will see numerous occurrences of values over 10,000 in layer 1, over 8000 in Layer 2, over 6000 in Layer 3, and over 4000 in Layer 4 (depending on the size of your D6 file). In fact, from my own W6 lottery reports the statistics for those values appearing (HAPPENING!) are as follows:
Fivs Fivr
Layer 1 32% 33%
Layer 2 36% 40%
Layer 3 45% 49%
Layer 4 54% 60%
So why not set Fivs and Fivr to those values, you have a 1 in 3 chance of getting that filter correct in Layer 1 and a better chance of being right in the other Layers to the point where you're more likely to be right rather than wrong in Layer 4(!) AND those filter settings greatly reduce the number of combinations generated.
OK, so to last Saturday. In the 3 lines that I played I had 4 of the 6 winning lotto numbers, but sadly not in the same line. So I added Saturday's draw to the top of my UKALL (lotto 6 data-6) file and produced the W6 reports to see what values actually came out for the filters that draw. I was wrong in only three of them. If I had created my ST6.XXX file as follows:
0 0 0
0 0 0 0 09 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 10000 10000 0 0 0 0 0 8
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1000 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 0 8
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 34 0 0
0 0 6000 6000 0 0 0 0 0 8
0 0 10 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 10
(Note: ONLY 13 of the possible 80 filter settings have been used!!!)
…POWER632 would have generated only 97 clotto ombinations to play. One of those would have been a 4/6 win, one a 5/6 (plus the bonus ball) win, and ONE A 6/6 JACKPOT! The three filters I got wrong I had set too tight, and so they prevented certain numbers being 'selected' and hence very few possible lottery combinations.
But If I had done the above STRAT file I would have eliminated ALL but 97 lotto combinations out of 13.98~million…AND WON!
I know that is hindsight, I know we can all say '..well if I'd have done…then', but I am getting closer, much closer to setting these filters correctly and winning the lottery jackpot. And I will win it.
Persevere. Don't give up.
'The truth knocks on your door and you say “Go away! I'm looking for the truth”. And so it goes away. Puzzling.' – From 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'
Good luck all.
Nik
Resources in Lottery Software, Systems, Strategy, Lotto Wheeling
Follow Ups:
Comments:
Home | Search | New Writings | Software | Odds, Generator | Contents | Forums | Sitemap