To Konane:
Thanks for your support.
I've long considered your point concerning multiple ballsets. Illinois uses twenty ballsets and twelve machines for their daily games. The ballset and machines are chosen at random before each drawing, and these machines are then tested several times before the drawing takes place. Michigan has a similar policy. Initially, it seems that you actually have to choose your numbers from a pool of 200 (twenty ballsets x ten balls each), but this really isn't the case. The only reason these states (among others) do this is to guarantee a high degree of randomness. Ping-pong balls used in lottery drawings are manufactured to very close weight tolerances, usually micro grams. This is done to overcome bias which, in lottery games, is a measured difference in the behavior of each ball as it enters or exits the airstream in the hopper. However, since lottery balls are painted by machines, differences in the amount of paint applied to any ball, the thickness of that paint or even the shape of the number can influence the bias on that ball. These amounts are small but, as you know, any identifiable differences can be exploited to the player's advantage. The lotteries don't want us doing that, so they use multiple ballsets to try to throw off the serious systems player.
Any good lottery system, for example, exploits the law of averages in order to enable its user to make accurate predictions more often than inaccurate ones. Most of these systems don't directly deal with bias, but I have seen a few that require the player to study the bias of each digit in a game (remember Professor Jones???). These systems are more complex than Chinese calculus(apologies to my Asian friends), are very expensive to buy and are even more expensive to play. In the end, however, I don't believe they are any more effective than other systems that don't require physics equations.
Patience. I'm getting there.
Most lottery players, I think, miss a very important element in their playing strategy, and that element is time. Think about it: when we buy or develop a new system, the first thing we do is chart the past results of the game. For a daily Pick-4 game, for example, I'll chart the results for the past 300 draws before I buy a ticket. This takes a while, but it gives me insights into the overall behavior of every digit in the game. I can then break that information down relative to position, frequency and type (no-match, doubles, triples and quads). Even after I have this information, though, I still might not buy a ticket, because I know I can't win everyday. So I wait. I wait until I can spot a trend that has repeated over and over again, and then I wheel my numbers and buy my tickets. I might not get a hit that night but, by waiting for an opportunity to improve my odds, I've saved the money I would have spent when no trends were apparent. Time favors the player. The state lottery must draw the numbers at pre-designated times, but we don't have to buy a ticket. We can afford to wait, which brings me, finally, to the multiple ballsets.
In my opinion, it doesn't matter how many ballsets they use. Over time, twenty ballsets will exhibit the same behavior, relative to bias, as two or three. All twenty ballsets will be used dventually, and the miniscule differences in the bias of each of the two hundred balls will be absorbed by the Law of Averages. In other words, as you chart your past results, those results will already reflect the present degrees of bias and randomness inherent in the combined ballsets. Each ballset contains ten digits, 0 through 9. Using twenty ballsets, we have twenty zeroes, twenty ones, twenty twos, and so on. Each of the twenty twos, for example, will behave slightly differently in the airstream than its nineteen counterparts, due to minute differences in its weight and bias characteristics. The same is true for all of the other digits. But bias can, and does change over time. As the air slams the balls around inside the machine, they lose paint and material, which falls to the bottom of the hopper. This changes their weight and overall degree of bias until that ballset wears out and must be replaced. I don't know if they change all twenty ballsets when one wears out, or if they only replace the worn set, but it shouldn't matter. Since the game doesn't know which ballset is being used on any given day, the Law of Averages should prevail. The game only knows that it has to produce one ball from each machine. So in a Pick-4 game, it will see only 4 zeroes, 4 ones, 4 twos, etc. The remaining sixteen ballsets are not a factor in this drawing. The Law of Averages states that, over time, each digit should appear as often as every other digit. Look at almost any state's daily game results and you can see that this is, for the most part, true. Isn't that how we pick our winners, by combing through our charts, looking for numbers that are overdue, hot, cold, etc.?
If your state's game has recently introduced additional ballsets, wait them out. Don't play for six months or so, and give them a chance to rotate their ballsets completely at least once, preferably twice. This will enable you to chart the overall characteristics of past drawings utilizing the additional ballsets, and should give you a pretty good idea of how the extra ballsets are affecting the game. If the change has been relatively recent, you should be able to pinpoint when they switch them out. If you can discover an interval, you'll have a decided edge over the lottery, as well as the other players in your state. Let's say you're charting your daily game results everyday, but you're not actually buying tickets. If you can identify when they change ballsets or machines, you can narrow your odds dramatically on those days, because you'll know what happened the last time they used it. For their daily Pick-3 and Pick-4 games, for example, Michigan uses the same machines for six weeks, then switches them out for backup machines. This is valuable information since, once I can identfy the beginning of a six-week cycle, I can also identify its end. Then, I adjust my selections accordingly, or I wait until I see something I can exploit, such as a trend or an overdue double.
I'm sure there are people here who will disagree with me, and I'm looking forward to reading their arguments. We all have our methods, superstitions and strategies, and those presented here are the ones that have worked for me. Since I no longer play in Indiana (except Powerball), I've found these observations to be extremely valuable in games using ping-pong balls. For games using computerized electronic random number generators, good luck to you, but you're on your own.
Thus ends today's presentation. I wish you all a happy holiday season and a very profitable 2004.