First, I’d like to thank all the people who are willing to share ideas on this forum. I’ve been lurking for about a year, trying to absorb as much as I can, and putting somthing into place with which I’m comfortable. I thought I’d share it to get feedback and see if anyone can see where I might be failing miserably. I'm hesistant to call it a "system" as it's really just a combination of filters I've read about here and online.
My game of choice is Canada’s Lotto 6/49. The first thing I did was analyze all previous history (currently at 2953 draws) for any patterns that may be relevant. Here are some things I’ve found, which may be common knowledge, but were interesting nonetheless.
Top 14 Decade/Digit Patterns – NumDrawsMatched – Probability
2-2-1-1-0/2-1-1-1-1-0 – 550 – 18.6%
3-2-1-0-0/2-1-1-1-1-0 – 281 – 9.5%
3-1-1-1-0/2-1-1-1-1-0 – 242 – 8.2%
2-2-1-1-0/2-2-1-1-0-0 – 234 – 7.9%
2-1-1-1-1/2-1-1-1-1-0 – 200 – 6.8%
2-2-1-1-0/1-1-1-1-1-1 – 192 – 6.5%
3-2-1-0-0/1-1-1-1-1-1 – 143 – 4.8%
3-2-1-0-0/2-2-1-1-0-0 – 122 – 4.1%
2-2-2-0-0/2-1-1-1-1-0 – 103 – 3.5%
3-1-1-1-0/1-1-1-1-1-1 – 97 – 3.3%
2-1-1-1-1/2-2-1-1-0-0 - 88 – 3.0%
3-1-1-1-0/2-2-1-1-0-0 - 80 – 2.7%
2-1-1-1-1/1-1-1-1-1-1 – 76 – 2.6%
2-2-1-1-0/3-1-1-1-0-0 - 75 – 2.5%
These patterns alone account for approximately 84% of draws so I thought it would be a good place to start to apply further filters.
Top 12 Hot-Avg-Cold Patterns – NumDrawsMatched – Probability
2-4-0 – 427 – 14.5%
2-3-1 – 419 – 14.2%
3-3-0 – 401 – 13.6%
1-5-0 – 298 – 10.1%
1-4-1 – 278 – 9.4%
3-2-1 – 253 - 8.6%
4-2-0 – 182 - 6.2%
2-2-2 – 131 - 4.4%
1-3-2 – 112 - 3.8%
0-5-1 - 80 - 2.7%
4-1-1 - 78 - 2.6%
0-6-0 - 74 - 2.5%
The remaining twelve patterns cover 6.9% combined so I limit myself to the above twelve.
High/Low – Draws – Probability
6/0 – 38 – 1.3%
5/1 – 282 – 9.6%
4/2 – 764 – 25.9%
3/3 – 1039 – 35.2%
2/4 – 613 – 20.8%
1/5 – 197 – 6.7%
0/6 – 20 – 0.7%
Even/Odd – Draws – Probability
6/0 – 31 – 1.1%
5/1 – 218 – 7.4%
4/2 – 669 – 22.7%
3/3 – 972 – 32.9%
2/4 – 738 – 24.5%
1/5 – 293 – 9.9%
0/6 – 32 – 1.1%
I ignore 6/0 and 0/6 in both of these categories.
Now I was curious as to the range of the first and last numbers drawn:
Start-End Pattern – Draws – Probability
1-9, 40+ - 1616 – 54.7%
1-9, <40 - 499 – 16.9%
10+, 40+ - 710 – 24.0%
10+, <40 - 128 – 4.3%
I ignore the last pattern here.
I was then curious as to how many numbers are drawn from the last five draws:
Numbers Draw From Last Five Draws
0: 50 – 1.7%
1: 277 – 9.4%
2: 765 – 26.0%
3: 965 – 32.7%
4: 644 – 21.8%
5: 211 – 7.2%
6: 41 – 1.4%
Again here, I ignore the extremes and make sure my lines contain between 1-5 numbers drawn from within the last five draws.
However, drilling down more, I discovered that while the above holds true, it’s also true that it is extremely rare that any winning line will contain more than two numbers from any previous draw from within the last five. Therefore, I apply this additional filter.
Additional Filters
Taking a look at all 2953 draws, only 123 draws contained a sequence of three. Therefore, I also ignore sequence of threes.
Another filter I apply is looking at the end-digit pattern. For instance, 1-12-22-35-36-49 would be 122569. I turns out that from the 2953 draws, a repeat pattern only happened ten times. Therefore, I make sure that any line I generate is unique.
The last filter I apply is that I make sure my numbers have never won before.
Generating Lines
Applying all these filters to the entire draw history will account for 78% of draws. Maybe I’m eliminating too many potential winners? If so, I’m not sure where to be more flexible except maybe increasing the number of Decade/Digit patterns I allow. For instance, I can get 85% coverage if I increase the number of Decade/Digit patterns to the Top 20.
So now that I have a set of filters I’m comfortable with, how do I generate lines?
One method I tried was simply to create lines that met the above criteria.
The second method I tried was to generate a matrix using all 49 numbers that met the above criteria.
I wrote a program to do this for me so for each draw I could create thousands of lines or matrices for testing. Unfortunately, despite various tweaking, I couldn’t see a noticeable preference for lines or matrices. And, the system did not consistently produce better than 3/6. Out of a thousand lines, the most 4/6 I ever saw was 18. 5/6 was rare, and over the course of a year or so, I only ever saw 6/6 once.
Then I came across Robert Perkis’ article, “How to Win Your Pick-6 Lottery Game” and have decided to try his method of generate six sets of groups of 3. I make sure that my “triplets” still conform to the filters I’ve mentioned above; I try to get a representative sample across the Top 14 Decade/Digit pattern and Top 12 Hot/Avg/Cold patterns but it's impossible to get full coverage - some patterns are overly represented while some are missed completely. I do make sure that I get at least one line representing each of the top six Decade/Digit and Hot/Avg/Cold patterns but not all of the remaining patterns are represented.
The downside to this system is that the outlay per draw is $30. The upside is that multiple wins are possible and you don’t eliminate yourself from a potential jackpot win. I’ve only used this method twice and am -$40 but had three numbers correct the first time and four numbers correct the second time (not on the same line though).
Anyway, I thought I’d share and see what people think. Thanks.
