hypersoniq's Blog

Maybe it is time to take the pick 3 eve and pick 3 day data and smash it together to see what top combos emerge...

Since there was no change, let's try posting them...

Mid day PA pick 3 best guess 1 9 8

Eve PA pick 3 best guess 0 8 3

Playing $0.50 straight and $0.50 box.

Total cost for 7 days = $14

Possible hits $250 straight / $40 box

The closest to a win would have been yesterday mid, when they drew 1 9 7... I was taking 2 days off so I would have missed it if they drew the 8 instead of the 7... 

Already dropped the match 6, and in the process of debugging the pick 5 script, so that is also on the shelf.

$14 per week for the rest of the year.

The first week picks for the pick 5 ended up being slightly different in week 2, the pick 3 was added in week 2. Since I am moving forward with the pick 3, it is interesting that the combo choice has not changed for either day or night...

I simplified the sorting process by adding a composite column, which simply adds the straight and box hits of the combos together. It was a simple adjustment that needed a variable to add the other 2 (straight + box hits) and creating a column header and writing the new column to the csv file.

I am still seeing some inconsistent counts in the pick 5 output, which makes it an ideal time to remake the code to count properly as the switch to the pick 3 only is underway.

I also noticed some inconsistencies when looking at the number of draws in the csv files vs. The spreadsheets. The history files were initially entered by hand so events such as the infamous 666 evening draw and their short lived "double draw" results could be kept out.

I may have to resort to running the entire history file creation again, only this time with the year to year copy data from the URL instead of manual typing... that will be an ongoing project... I have gotten better at cleaning data, but it is still a monumental task, as pick 3 evening data goes all the way back to 1977 and the website only gives out a year at a time.

I almost wish I did not see the anomalies, but data consistency is important.

The pick 5 test, week 2. So far, the combo changed from one week to the next, with each matching 4 of 5 at least once. On the pick 3 side, it was 2 out of 3 twice in the only week tried so far. There are 2 cycles of mid and eve left, now it is time to pick just one to go into the weekend and next week. There could still be a hit, but must proceed as if there will not be a hit.

Pick 3 cost could be done 2 ways...

0.50 st and 0.50 box for $14 for a week, prizes $250 st / $40 bx

Or

$1 st and 0.50 box for $21 for a week, prizes $500 st / $40 bx

Then there is the pick 5...

$1 straight and $1 box for $28 for a week, prizes $50,000 st / $425 box.

Being mindful of the odds... this system only looks at combos with unique digits...

Pick 3 unique digit draws represent 72% of all draws, (120 when factoring in 6 way permutations) where pick 5 unique digit draws only represent 30% of all draws (252 when factoring in 120 way permutations).

Draw updates are also considered, as each history file will need to be maintained.

I came up with a work flow to update with a simple copy paste from the PA lottery past draws site so if I only update once a week it is the same as updating more or less frequently.

From looking at the data, the plan going forward is to go cheaper... $14 for 0.50st/0.50bx pick 3. Altering the play strategy so that a box hit will trigger adding in the pick 5 for the next 7 day cycle. 

From just 12 days of the test, it is much less frustrating than generating a pick for each draw. It is nicer to see digits matching more often, and one day they will mess up and maybe I get a hit...

I have added the 148 most recent draws to the PB history and I am working on the 14 months of missing data from the MM history.

The plan here is that the pick 3 box can fund the chase for the pick 5, and the pick 5 box can fund the chase for the jackpot games... not bored with playing, just over paying for it... even if a box on the pick 3 works, I will still spend $2 to add in a week of pick5...

Like every other system I have worked on for the past 20+ years, the reasonable expectation is that it does not work, though it IS the first system that also looks at box hits as a win. I could live with $14 to $16 per week for playing... I dropped the match 6 so there is already $14 per week towards it. 

This year has been slow, but the one straight hit gave me the Raspberry Pi 5 that I otherwise would have passed on. That is set up now as a local network web server so I can practice building full stack web solutions... will give this system a fair chance for the remainder of 2024. Maintenance once a week is much better than daily!

The numbers changed slightly. The mechanism for picking the straight combo to play out of the 120 permutations is up and automated, and work has begun to modify the process for the pick 3.

No hits straight or boxed, but having 3 out of 5 was the most frequent event, followed by twice having 4 of 5 on the day game... and one of those had 3 in position.

1:100,000 odds on a straight hit, 120:100,000 odds on a box.

Statistically it performed better (without actually hitting) than recalculating the followers for each draw. Updating the draw history files once a week is much less time intensive than daily.

I will re run the program after updating the draws. Perhaps one more week before taking what was learned from this pick 5 experiment and rolling it down to the pick 3 to continue testing at 1/2 the cost.

Looking at combos and permutations and also staying with a combo for a week rather than 1 draw are all in direct opposition to everything I have worked on for the past 20 years, However, what I have seen in this last year has pretty much left me with the sense that isolating individual columns is never going to work. There is still a nod to frequency when deciding the straight combo,  and 3 out of 5 in the right place was a positive indicator that it is as good as any other solution... but studying the permutations of the desired event (5 unique digits) and having the spreadsheet be able to instantly verify the correctness makes sense to me... still only playing one combo for day and one combo for night.

I will be trying to stick to the above for awhile to give it an actual chance. 

Why limit to 5 unique digits? Because there are 120 permutations and the $1 box bet returns $425, well below the $600 claim form threshold.

Will be waiting for any type of win before an attempt at running the vertical horizon frequency by combo position program on the PB or MM. That seems like something that should wait until I am back on house money...

Not a prediction script, just a draw generator that can output a possible combo for whatever game the parameters are set for... one that can be given a start date and make n number of runs. Would not matter if it was a pick 2 or a pick 6 (or a pick 5+1).

Might be something to work out just for the challenge... run the script, then make sure the seeds cannot be reverse engineered (by avoiding prng system calls...)

Don't know what the actual use would be, outside of in interesting code project...

Had to tweak the spreadsheets to do a frequency count to know which of the 120 permutations has the highest overall value of hits per digit in place, as that is how the straight combo is picked. So it totals them all and then displays a MAX value of the set to highlight the highest valued combo. A little conditional formatting makes it even quicker to spot.

Pick generation...

1. Run the python script that counts both straight and permutation hits.

2. Open the csv file that holds the numbers, the count of straight hits and the count of permutation hits. Use sorting to first sort by the boxed hits, then by the straight hits. The first number appearing within the results that has 5 unique digits is the pick for the week

3. Pop the pick into the spreadsheet to both validate the program results and to find the highest scoring permutation based on per column frequency

That then becomes the pick for the week, one for mid day pick 5 and one for evening pick 5.

Play each game (mid and eve) with it's resultant pick $1 straight and $1 boxed for 7 days (the limit of advanced daily game bets on the PA self serve kiosks)

The next big thing? Doubtful... but it is a starting point. Why not just focus on the pick 3? Because the pick 5 is the goal! Anything learned during this experiment series can be directly applied to the pick 3 later...

At $28 per week I will probably not go on long with zero results, so here is hoping this system catches an early hit... day one was not so lucky, 2 numbers in the mid day and 3 in the evening, but hey, it wasn't zero!

There are not high hopes because the event of 5 unique digits only covers a little over 30% of the possible outcomes. I do think that this is the cheapest way possible to have a proper go at it though.

Here in PA, they started the pick 5 (aka Quinto) for both day and evening on the same date.

Same game, same rules, DIFFERENT pick mechanisms... day is computer based while the night still uses the ping pong ball mechanical method.

Pick 2 was done the same way, on the same day. The pick 3 and pick 4 have years of history on the evening games over the later introduction of the computer generated day game counterparts.

When looking at the particular case of unique digits...

Pick 2 has 90 of the possible digits with unique numbers, and since each unique combo has only 2 permutations, the set of possibilities can be set at 45. See how the house advantage works... if you play all 45 combos at $1 boxed, the cost is $45 with a 90% chance of winning $25.

Pick 3 has 720 unique combos, when considering the 6 permutations, this comes down to 120. Playing all 120 at 50 cents costs $60 for a 72% chance of winning $40.

Pick 4 has 5,040 unique digit combos, and when considering the 24 permutations reduces thus to 210 combos for roughly a 50% chance at winning $100 by spending $105 on 50 cent box tickets.

Finally, the pick 5 has 30,240 unique combos, permutations reduce this list to 252. Playing all of these would cost $252 boxed to return $425, however... unique digit draws only cover 30% of the outcomes... always a house advantage.

So, obviously this indicates that there is no sure fire way to get an angle on the game without eliminating combinations.

On the surface, there is no way to tell if the system is genuine or if they gravitate to paying out the low bets. On one hand they limit the sale of combos... it has happened many times where a pick 3 like 777 was "sold out". They will never publish the sales data.

We have the history, but the history of random numbers is not supposed to yield any actionable intel because it is random.

Every lottery system is based on assumptions, from the simple workouts to the big game wheels. So here is where the hypothesis starts... the system in PA could be set up to mostly pay out the low played numbers because it is run by humans and humans are greedy... If you remember the infamous 666 drawing where latex paint was injected into the balls, PA does not have a stellar track record of integrity.

So now we turn our eyes back to the history files, only using it to see winning draws as the result of this manipulation. Following the money instead of just the raw data... they DO publish the payouts for the daily games... this could be used to take a guess at the low played numbers. Look at the difference in a payout for a 777 vs just about any non triple... this is where I completely missed the boat by focusing on individual numbers vs combos.

So now I have developed sheets and scripts to specifically count hits for combos AND their permutations, which covers not only looking at straight hit trends but boxed as well.

Pick 5 day and pick 5 evening, though drawn by different methods, have similarities...

Each one has a 5 unique digit combo that was drawn 3 times straight... each one has several 5 unique digit numbers that were drawn 14 times boxed. NOT the same combos.

The betting system for this would be as straightforward as the pick 3... pick one combo and run it straight and boxed for a week... cost $28 (for both day and night). Instead of focusing on the top straight combo, playing the combo that has the most boxed hits for each game. The straight ticket will be decided by the overall frequencies of each digit in each position. Hoping to play that as soon as the data is put together. Sure it is twice as expensive as a pick 3 round, but a box hit pays out over 10x vs pick 3 box.

After this I will be sapped of any new ideas, so here js hoping that some good results emerge.

The list of 5 unique digits can be boiled down to 252 combos. I can count the hits with permutations. This gives a handful of combos that have hit more than others. Each combo has itself and 119 permutations... so, if picking one, which is the right way to play it straight?... the one out of 120...

Perhaps super simple is the way to go... get a digit count for each column and play the combo in question that has the most probable chance of coming out in that order... would not have to leave the spreadsheet for that one...

Might be worth a shot. Looking to update the sheets and give it a test next week. Dropping the pick 3 after 10/31's draw.

The pick 5 in PA is a combination of numbers from 0 to 9, that is 10 possible digits in each of the 5 places...

Fact 1... there are 100,000 possible combos. Based on 10x10x10x10x10 = 100,000. They can be from 00000 to 99999

Fact 2... IF we are only interested in the combinations made from 5 unique digits, our choices grow smaller with each successive position... 10,9,8,7,6 = 30,240 combinations of 5 unique digits.

Fact 3... Since each combination of 5 unique digits contains itself and 119 permutations then that leads to there being a key set of combinations that would cover each eventuality, boxed... that would be 30,240 / 120 = 252

Does that sound right?

It is definitely not a revelation, as there still remains 69,760 combos that could fall on any given night... but it does seem to indicate that if you reduce the pick pool down to 252, you would have a better chance at catching a box hit... of course these need to be counted and I am stuck on exactly that program where all the permutations will be accurately counted (they count now but not accurately).

Does that sound like a reasonable assessment of the pick 5 situation?

I created a section in a spreadsheet where I can enter any 5 digit combo and it will count the number of straight hits, plus sum the hits on the 119 permutations. I am thinking that maybe the top 3 to 5 performers in this abbreviated list of 252 might be worth a shot at playing... but I need to get those accurate counts. Need to work on that program some more today.

I am relatively new to dealing with direct combos, and I have this program working with the pick 3, but not so with the pick 5... straight hits count accurately but it counts too many permutation hits that fail when the number is analyzed on the spreadsheet (for example, one such combo says it has 120 box hits, but when validated it only has 5).

Even the 252 list will only account for around 30% of the draws, but there is a gut feeling that there may be something worthwhile pursuing on this combo track.

The pick 3 permutation counter ran successfully and validating the box hit was easy. The pick 5 version is correct in the straight hit counter, but the box or permutation counts are not passing validation, the program looks like it worked but the boxed counts do not match the number observed during validation... now to figure out why... I think it has to do with the uniqueness cases... there are 3 possibilities on the pick 3;

3 unique digits 

One pair

Triples

The pick 5 adds to that possibility matrix...

5 unique digits

One pair

Two pair

Three of a kind

"Full house" (3 of the same digit and a different pair)

Four of a kind

5 of a kind.

That is 7 potential outcome patterns vs 3. I wrote the pick 3 version with 3 separate conditional statements to handle each case, and I wrote the pick 5 version with all 7 of the above conditional patterns in mind, so it must be in that section where the disconnect is happening...

So will be skipping a planned test of the pick 5 and instead rolling with 095 and 667 again in the pick 3 through Oct. 31

I find myself working on a spreadsheet modification that will allow me to type in any 5 digit number and automatically show the permutation hits as well... this is ONLY for the 5 unique digit case, as this has 119 permutations of the number of interest. This is needed to verify the permutation counts in the python program. I have validated accuracy in the pick 3 version, but the data from the pick 5, though correct on the straight hit count, seems a little too symmetrical to be accurate. The feature may only be used one or two times, but it is extremely important to get accurate data from a program, as this hobby is difficult enough.

All of the scripts and spreadsheets sit in a folder on the desktop (and a backup on a flash drive). Each file is either a spreadsheet, a .csv file, or a Python script.

They all require specific knowledge of how they were created and how to use them... there are no slick GUI apps...

I think it is time to learn how to turn a script into a finished stand alone desktop application.

Also, unrelated, I plan on evaluating on line courses to find a thorough crash course in full stack web development. Wanting to take the skills learned in school and apply them to something worth putting on a resume... I don't think 25 lottery specific algorithms are suitable for a portfolio...

Based solely on the highest number of hits, here are the next 7 days guess for PA pick 3...

Mid day = 095

Evening = 667

Running these 0.50 straight and 0.50 box.

Still working out the details of interpreting the permutation counts, but these are the most frequent straight combos across the draw history... almost 17,000 night draws and almost 8,000 day draws.