Quote: Originally posted by BobP on July 19, 2004
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Of course it depends on what the software is doing. If the software uses wheels and filters, I expect to be able to import wheels of my own making such as front loaded and to position my numbers with the better choices up front.
BobP
Each time we've had an opportunity to look at front loaded wheels I've agreed with you on them. They make good sense, because the player usually had some priority in the way the numbers were chosen.
For example:
... If the player chooses 24 numbers out of a 49-number field, he's not just "shotgunning" some numbers. There must be some reason why he picked those 24 and none of the other 25.
... To pick 24 out of 49, he had to use some 'method' for picking those numbers. Call it anything for this example; the name isn't important. Even if it's something as basic as a "hot" list (not a good term), the 24th number in that list couldn't have been as "hot" as the 1st number, and so on.
So the idea in front loading is, if the player had a preference in picking the numbers to start with, then his preference ought to carry all the way through his wheeling. In other words, the "preferred" numbers ought to be wheeled together as much as possible, while still keeping the wheel consistent with its win guarantee.
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We've agreed on front loaded wheeling several times already. I just wanted to review it (above) for anyone who's not so familiar with them, in order to offer a different suggestion (coming up).
You haven't been real happy with "Zone" or "split" wheels, for several reasons. Not to get into them here, because it's way outside the scope of this suggestion.
There's a case where a certain kind of "Zone" wheel can give you an alternative to front loading. That's what I wanted to offer as a suggestion.
If the idea is get maximum coverage of some preferred numbers, just put them together into one Zone in the wheel. Make that Zone have its own win guarantee, and then let those "Zone" numbers work with the rest of the numbers.
For example: Suppose the player has 24 numbers, including 8 that are more strongly "preferred" than the rest. Put those 8 numbers into a Zone. Let them get wheeled together in something like "2-to-4" numbers per line, with the rest of each line taken up by combining the other 16 numbers.
The main idea is, if your "preferred" numbers happen to hit you'll know you have them on most of the lines in the wheel, not just in the front part of it.
It will probably start out as a more expensive wheel than a front-loaded Abbreviated or open cover, but you could consider some filtering to reduce it. It looks like you might have had filtering in mind, in your original post, so this could work.
Long post. Hope it's helpful.
Joe
CDEX