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...