hypersoniq's Blog

Picks ready, week 3 of the pick 3 operation.

The day draw I just missed in week 2 was indeed an all neutral draw, I just picked the wrong number from column 2... phase 2 is not very precise... yet.

Might go out on a self funded run at the pick 5 in week 4, it's only $14 extra...

Also considering a self funded run at the Cash 4 Life plan, first week of August... that way the no pick 3 win contingency is covered and I at least get to have a shot. One shot... no pressure...

When studying the results of that neutral near miss, there was no clear indicator that the 8 was a better pick than the 6. End of the day (or week) it is and will always remain a best guess.

This week, the numbers picked were closer to the target. 2 of 3 in position on the mid day and 1 of 3 in position on the evening.

The 1 day stagger per week is the strategy update for the next round. Instead of updating and re running the script tonight, I will do that tomorrow night instead. This will make the 6 weeks remaining take just about 7 weeks to complete.

I am also updating the pick 5 and Cash 4 Life histories in the event they can be rolled out with a hit.

It still comes down to a best single guess, so it might be worth cycling the numbers under consideration through the part of the master data spreadsheet that counts all of the straight and boxed hits, using that result as a tie breaker.

That is tomorrow night's pick strategy...

1. Use the median (2nd quartile) as a range identifier

2. Cycle the combos possible in those ranges to go with the one combo that has the best "record"

On a per column basis, anything learned here DIRECTLY applies to the pick 5 selection process and can serve as a guideline to get a pick (if ever funded by a pick 3 hit) for the cash 4 life.

There is still one draw for both mid and eve to go for this week, and the back test was full of weeks where the NNN draw came in on day 7 of the window.

For this week the plan is set, and for next week I will be taking a look at the standard deviation itself and how it might be applied to the selection process.

This will definitely go down as the longest live trial I have done with any system!

My number for the day game.. 5 6 1

PA's pick for the day game... 5 8 1

2 columns correct...

Not yet there, but an improvement over last week.

In my dabbling in this hobby, I believe we are only given the game set up (pick a combo from 1 in 10, pick 5 of 70 plus a bonus ball of 24) and the draw history. Without said history, why bother?

There are those who believe otherwise, and more power to them. There are those that use the last draw for workouts, there are those that select numbers based on their environment (license plate numbers for example) and those who select numbers based on dreams. There are also players who use quick picks exclusively. There is no real WRONG way to make a pick.

To this end, I continue to study how the numbers were drawn in previous games with the hope that I might be able to gain a better pick for a future draw. I have reached the level in coding and analysis where I spend time disproving my own theories by back testing.

I have run extensive tests on things like mirrors only to see that long term they offered no higher returns than just about any other replacement system (like +111)

Patterns I thought I had discovered in followers did not survive the scrutiny of a back test either.

I have essentially given up on mapping the last draw to the next directly using the numbers.

I still believe that there are answers in the draw histories, even if I am not quite smart enough to capitalize on them.

The system I have currently instead looks at distribution frequencies over a set number of draws, trying to map the last 150 draws to the next 7. 

I do not see another way to make a best guess without using past results as a guide.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. 

I rather enjoy the challenge of trying to solve impossible problems. It is taking less time to convert ideas into code, code into spreadsheets, incorporate and validate software.

Even if draws are truly random isolated events, there is some underlying pattern to their distribution.

It is time to up the programming game and convert these latest scripts into a nice looking GUI. And to perhaps take the output from the phase 1 script into a phase 2 script that can be used to make selection easier by adding visualization and to help develop the series of steps necessary to make that best guess.

Although there are as many systems as there are players, I am firmly in the draw history camp.

Happy Coding!

It is interesting how much the distributions change over just 7 draws... 143 of the 150 draws in the model are the same.

The plan is to test the best starting point. I see what the Tuesday night data leading to a Wednesday pick looks like, so the new strategy is to skip the start day weekly...

This week the pick was made on a Tuesday night for Wednesday play. Next week I will wait until Wednesday night to make a guess at a Thursday play... up until I am using Monday night results to make a pick for Tuesday.

So that means this system will get at least 6 more weeks of a live trial.

With that I can compute projected costs...

Already spent $35, will add 6 more weeks at $14 for a total play budget of $119. It only would have been $112, but I played the first week at 1.00 straight and 0.50 box.

So, to make it all back, any 50 cent straight hit will return the play budget along with $131 profit. Plus the box hit at $40 or $80 when a combo is picked with a double.

The system goes by each column, so doubles and even triples are possible. Therefore 3 50 cent box hits @$40 or 2 50 cent box hits @$80 will also return the expense.

This week still has draws through Tuesday evening.

Although any hit, from $40 to $290 will trigger a first shot at the pick5. Also, a straight hit will allow a first shot at the PA Cash4Life.

Hopefully each week will allow for refinement of the selection process.

The plan is also the budgeting process. $14 per week is what I was spending on the Match 6. Sustainable entertainment value. I dropped all play when I started this development process months ago. If there is a hit, I can roll out one or both of the other games for one shot, then go back to the pick 3 only budget.

And, if the next 6 weeks go by winless, it will be an indicator to perhaps cease live play and come up with a better phase 2 selection process. Worst case scenario is that I spent $119 over 8 weeks for some false hope and entertainment.

What was learned so far in the implementation of statistics in Python and the input and output of data was definitely worth the time investment!

Week 1 was $21

This week was $14, subsequent weeks will be $14

I have spent $35 so far without return yet. There are still 6 draws of each remaining.

A straight hit would be profit, a box hit would return what was spent so far + $5

2 out of 3 on the first mid day of this week's attempt, and 0 out of 3 on the evening.

The nice part of the process is that my previous week gets classified so I can see the spread of neutrals that came up. Last week, 3 different NNNs came out, so the number sets produced winners. Just have to figure out which number to pick from each column set a bit better each week.

Going to be coincidence if it works once... gotta remember that...

There is one draw remaining for the first week of testing the new system/concept.

There had been no wins so far. The selection process was not very complex, it was to stick as close to the middle of the middle as possible.

When working on the next attempt, I will begin to employ the different statistics, starting with the median, to help select from the neutral numbers in each column. One step at a time.

A formalized selection process will help with consistency. It is still a process where I am trying to pick 1 in 10, 3 consecutive times. The number of choices is reduced in phase one, but that still leaves roughly 300 possible combos to choose from.

The importance of a definite series of steps is when the pick 5 might be rolled out, it just adds 2 more 1 in 10 guesses, reduced by the elimination of the hots and colds.

At the end of the process it is still a guess, but the best guess I can make.

Every system I work on from here on out will use the phase one classification. Phase 2 will vary week to week until I get it right.

Thus far, had some individual column matches, the best being 2 of 3 on yesterday's mid day. The nice part of playing for a week is that I have a week to think about what to try next, rather than a day.

Going directly for the middle had not yet worked, so now I try using the median as a guide because in a discrete uniform distribution, the median should equal the expectancy, yet sometimes it is slightly lower, and sometimes it is slightly higher.

The new guidelines will be to observe the median (quartile 2) and pick from the group of neutrals as follows...

Median = expectancy, go for the number with a distribution closest to 10%

Median < expectancy, indicating there are more neutrals below the expectancy, so pick from the below 10% group.

Median > expectancy, indicating there are more neutrals above the expectancy, so pick from the above 10% group.

It will always come down to a best guess, and there is still only an 85% chance that the week will have at least one all neutral draw (52% when looking at the pick 5).

The subsequent weeks will be $14 (0.50 straight and 0.50 boxed per draw) so I will probably continue this live test for several weeks. If I go through the rest of June and July with no hits, then it will be time to jump back out and design a completely different phase 2 process. 

The goal is a formal step by step process that might someday be automated, so the program can display not just the classification data, but also generate an algorithmic best guess... because if it gets to that point, it can be back tested!

Tonight will be a draw history update and a run of the script for both mid day and evening, followed by another "best guess"

The distribution percents were not adding up. A number drawn 10 times should have had a percentage matching the expectancy, but instead it was slightly lower.

The issue, using 600 draws in the model, which would have worked if the expectancy was 1/60, but I am using an expectancy of 1/56... easiest fix ever... I just have to change the number of draws in the distribution model from 600 to 560!

Now if a number is drawn exactly 10 times, the percentage matches the expectancy. I eventually catch my own oversights.

While waiting for a pick 3 hit, may as well begin experimenting with a GUI for the output...

Not sure about the week long play, but it fits the observation so I will give it an honest attempt...

On one hand, the disappointment isn't going to be complete until the 7th draw, but on the other hand, a bad pick means you lose 7 times on the mid day draws and 7 times on the evening draws.

Upside is no need to crunch numbers every draw.

Of course, that means on a complete fail, I picked the wrong numbers (corresponding to the distribution percents). I will have to make some documentation of a few weeks in a row to see where I may have gone wrong. 

There are still 3 draws for each game remaining, so the first shot is not even done yet... a hit on draw 7 is just as valid as a hit on draw 1.

Tried one thing this week, will try a different approach when I make picks next week. Since it still costs exactly the same, I like the free time of only rerunning scripts one day a week.

I originally thought that I would need to change the ranges per column... i did not! Instead I just run the report for the whole column from 1 to 60.

I knew I would need to change the threshold on each side of the expectancy, but I only needed to introduce a scalar variable and set it to 1.5, so 1.5 standard deviations on both sides define the Hots and Colds properly. This was as simple as passing in the scalar value to the function... which means it can easily be modified.

I thought that I would need some fancy calculation to determine how many draws to use to train the model... it was simply 600, this gives every number the equal chance of appearing 10 times. (I used 15 times in the pick N variant)

I thought I might have to deal with the 0 drawn numbers differently, but they go right to the cold pile!

The expectancy was also a straight division... you would think 1/60 * 100 to get an expectancy of 1.666%... but remember, the columns hold the data in sorted order... the expectancy is actually 1/57 * 100 for 1.754%

Why?

Because in sorted order, the first column cannot have a 57, 58, 59 or 60 and the last cannot have a 1, 2, 3 or 4! Each column is restricted to 56 possible numbers because of the sort constraint!

Just by using the readily available sorted order draw history, the odds of 5/60 already dropped from 1:7,282,016 to the odds of 5/56 which is 1:5,093,088 doing nothing at all!

Within a 26 draw window, there were multiple NNNNN draws. The "safe" reduction shows the remaining numbers to pick are down to as low as 150,000 combos...

I will have to set up a back test to see what trends are there, and though still a near impossible task, I was glad to see how the observation carries forward into the non replacement draws... these numbers still come from the middle of the frequency distribution! Not at as high a rate as the pick N games, but it is there!

Now for the remaining coding tasks...

On the pick N, in order to maintain a single code base, I will list all of the pick 3 and pick 5 games, leaving the functions for each commented out until needed.

On the jackpot script, I will be looking at something similar, where I can pass the range and expectancy into the function so one program can handle C4L, MM and PB...

The range part will be an easy test script where I pass in a range and see if it counts the proper number sequence.

I have plenty of time, since any play on pick5 and cash4life must wait to be funded by a pick 3 win.

The effort will have to be bankrolled by the pick 3 because that is the strategy.

A Cash4Life attempt for a 26 draw window, brute forcing the bonus "cashball" by playing the same white balls with all 4, comes in at $208, not in my play budget, but easily covered by a 50 cent straight hit on the pick 3.

A pick 5 attempt will only cost $14, so a 50 cent box hit on the pick 3 would cover rolling that out for a week with another pick 3 shot.

The harder part will be the MM, which to brute force those bonus balls would cost $3,120... needing 13 50 cent straight hits on the pick 3, or the powerball, which would require $2,028 (with the multiplier)... needing 9 straight 50 cent hits on the pick 3.

The rest is just as much fantasy as a jackpot win, but the need is to master the pick 3, because those techniques will directly apply to a pick 5 attempt.

And the goal this year is to catch a straight pick 5 win... hard to do when not playing it!

If I do catch that straight pick 5 hit, I will keep the promise to myself that any win of $50,000 (pre tax) and I will reward myself with an LP Platinum membership... been unable to make that happen in over 20 years of playing... maybe this year will be different...

The first crack at the new system. Was not expecting much of anything yet. There are 6 mid draws left and 6 eve draws left... I am interested most in draws 2, 4 and 7... where the neutrals usually show up together.

The cash4life script is working and now just awaiting funding... just like the pick 5 attempt... and the mega millions attempt... patience is key, it is still trying to pick one combo of a little over 300 combos... will take some time to cement an actual play algorithm.

The first look at the cash4life neutrals indicates that the combos can be reduced from over 7 million to about 150,000 or so. Still gonna be a guess, but a better guess.

I have never even looked at this game before. Needed to create a history file from April, 2016 to last night.

On the PA website, you can view one year at a time. The output is in a table, so it is a simple copy/paste special operation to start.

Once I did the paste operations from all years into the spreadsheet, there was an extra row below each draw that had the "cash ball".

Since I was not interested in the cash ball (1 to 4) I selected the first cell (A1), went to data/filters/standard filter

I created a filter where it would select all rows that contained "Cash", select all of the resultant rows, and right click in the row number and chose "delete rows".

Back to data/filters and chose "remove filter"

Then I was left with the draws only. From this, I deleted blank columns between the results.

Then, after converting the textdate format to date, I selected the date column contents and clicked the A to Z sort, and replied yes when it wanted to extend the selection to all 5 number columns, and I had my history with the newest draw at the bottom. I also saved a copy as .csv for later use in Python.

The python coding for the production pick N script went well also... added variance to the column statistics. Now it displays the last 3 classification 7 draw windows PLUS the data for the last 150 draws.

I am no further on the actual pick for the pick 3, so that will have to wait for tomorrow to go live.

The things you pick up in spreadsheets... time on that cash4life sheet from start to finish was around 30 minutes. Most of that due to the dates on the PA website... it lists newest on top, but I use them with the newest on the bottom so updating is easier. That is why I needed to sort the dates, the years were correct, but they were sorted descending.

It is important to make sure the date column is actually DATE format and not textdate, as it pastes from the website... that was as easy as using the text to column feature under the data tab and choosing type date m/d/y... i did this BEFORE sorting.

The Cash4Life script will need to be a major rewrite of the pickN script... i want the same output, but everything changes... ranges per column, expectancy, draw window... taking time with this to get it right.

All in all, a productive day!

1. Start out by working up the final production code for the pick-n script.

2. Update the draw history files

3. Run the script and use a "from the middle" approach at a phase 2 pick. (One for mid day PA Pick 3, one for evening PA Pick 3

If I get this done in time, I will go play each resulting combo for a week @ $1 straight and $0.50 boxed... if not, I will update today's results after the evening draw and play tomorrow.

4. Create a PA Cash 4 Life history file

5. Begin a version of the script with the new expectancy values and 5/60 format.

That should be more than enough for a day of coding... I will eventually need to plug the new formula for Cash 4 Life into the back test framework, may require some heavy tweaking, but that is for another day.

Progress wise, phase 1 is tested and complete. The resulting Neutral numbers will appear in 85% of the pick 3 game's 7 draw windows. Resulting in a relatively safe reduction of combos by about 70%. Phase 2 is the important part, as it attempts to reduce the remaining 30% of all combos down to ONE best guess.

Should the current plan for phase 2 not pan out (and it probably will not), I only need to go back to the phase 2 drawing board... it took months to even get to this point... going all in on the classification of frequency distribution!

The goal was always one best guess, and many previous systems pulled in a win within a few weeks only to go flat after... that is the nature of coincidental systems... if I won, it was coincidence that the number from my guess came up. Same for this approach. The goal is to capture something that happens 85% of the time, rather than maybe 30 times in tens of thousands of draws.

The odds are still 1:1,000

Any combo can come up at any draw

The past draws have no real weight in the next draw... but really, why are we here then? We are ONLY given the game setup and the past draws.

I am a firm believer in playing for fun, and that means as cheaply as possible, but catching the occasional win to keep it interesting.

I am certainly too dumb to solve an unsolvable problem, but just smart enough to enjoy the attempts. Without this hobby there would be no need for me to study statistics and programming.

Whether today or tomorrow, I am going to at least try... I have not donated to the cause of "older Pennsylvanians" in months, time to get back in the game!

Did not find any "magic" answers in the stats. DID manage to notice that the most popular percent in each neutral draw was 10%... the expectancy...

BUT that only accounts for 800 or so of all 16,800 draws.

Here is the thing... not every neutral distribution HAS a 10% count in each column, BUT mostly has one where all 3 columns are NEAR 10%... same with the pick 5.

So, the initial strategy will be to look at the last 150 draw distribution and pick the number CLOSEST to 10% (over or under) in each column and try that combo for a week.

Since I decided to add the box, the normal budget will be $14. The FIRST try, however will be for $21.00 ($1 straight and 0.50 boxed both day and night)

Will probably pick the day and evening pick 3 combos on my next day off (Tuesday) and get the ball rolling.

Not giving up on the next phase of accuracy in selection, just getting bored of riding the bench and looking forward to getting into the game again for awhile.

I have noticed in the back test data, that it might be a good idea to include boxed play in the next pick 3 attempt. The neutral counts describe straights, but sometimes the box of a combo would NOT be comprised of all neutrals.

At a cost of $14 per week, a box hit of $40 or $80 would fund the system going forward. Even if the straight happens, the box would be the bankroll and the straights taken as all profit.

There is still a huge number of combos comprised of neutrals, so a box ticket would offer an extra incentive to watch the week if I miss the NNN combo (which is highly likely).