I think of the lottery as a pinball machine.

• The winning number is the steel ball.
  
• The flippers are the number of tickets bought.
  
• The bumpers are systems.

When the steel ball hits a bumper, anyone playing that system has a winner.

    I cannot imagine anyone would want to play a pinball machine that only had one bumper. The state, especially an RNG one, would have little trouble dodging that solitary bumper. Yet month after month, I read spats over whether or not any particular system is any good. Oddly, those raising the most ruckus don't even write their own systems. They angrily have their hands out, demanding that someone give them THE winning method. Better yet, skip the method, just post the numbers for their state! And hurry up, cutoff time is approaching!!

    I posted that if someone came up with a p5 system that hit, say, on the 1st of each month, it would stand to reason that with minor adjustment, it could be made to hit on some other day every month. I think few people would attempt such an adjustment. They would be content to lazily split the prize every 1st, rather than do a little more work and get the entire pot every 10th (or 14th, or 21st, etc.) of the month.

    To my way of thinking, it is better to have many bumpers/systems. When one is dodged, it increases the chance of another being hit. All of the players score higher because of that. Anyone who has ever played a pinball machine with several bumpers has seen when the ball gets caught in a rhythm between 3 or more bumpers how that score just runs up. That ball bounces off one bumper and runs right into another. Ping! Ping! Ping!

    The lazy don't care. Let's all pile on the same ship. They can't grasp the concept that if we're all on the same ship(system), we'll all sink together. And we're an easier target for the torpedo (or the iceberg). It's better to scatter ourselves a bit.

    The Titanic is remembered as this great ship with all manner of fancy outfitting and a great, tragic story to go with it. People don't realize that the reason there is a story to be told, rather than just a mystery of a ship that never made it to port, is because of the RMS Carpathia. That ship is the real hero of the story. She rescued the 700+ Titanic passengers that made it to the lifeboats. Form seems to trump substance. Few remember her. I do.

I say put a few more ships on the water, or a few more bumpers in the machine.

~Better to sail alone, than sink with the crowd.~