Cool Stories of the Truth - A New Mythology and Science of Winning

By Ion Saliu, Mythologist At-Large

Written on August 15, 2001.

I. Philosophy, Truth and The Science of Winning
You can read passages on my Computational Philosophy page on Fear_Survival primordial essence. I described phenomena as reactions of FearSurvival. Basically, we make conscious decisions. Sometimes, there is a force inside opposing some of our decisions. Consciously, we have a hard time trying to decode the inside opposition. I know by now that my decision may need rethinking or the addition of elements, etc. My understanding is not 100% accurate, possibly never will. That is, it takes a long time, under some circumstances, to come up with the correct interpretation. The difficulty, as I previously explained it, comes from the mixture of design and choice that humans are. We are what we are by design, not only by choice, as we love to believe. Haven't you seen that many suckers on TV proudly declaring: “If I were born again, I wouldn't be any other way! I would (consciously) choose the same way!” You would (almost) certainly be another way, sucker, because of the fairly random interaction of the two primordial factors. The chain of interaction is so complex, that the probability is infinitely low the same path would be taken again.

I wanted to hit the casinos as big as I could afford to. Yet, there was some opposition inside. I thought over the validity of my systems. I am more unbiased on analyzing my ideas than one can even imagine. That's one reason why I keep inventing idea after idea. Nothing is perfect, nothing is final, but the eternal Change. Sounds like religion, but it isn't. It is my motto. It was not disbelief in my systems. Was it money? To some extent. I could use a larger bankroll. But I learned how to start a walk in small steps. Then, there will come the time to run in huge strides.

My next interpretation was connected to the new directions in lottery strategy: the 'wonder-grid' and the 'killer lottery strategy'. Again, to some extent, the opposition was valid. It would have been a pity to postpone the creation of the new software.

Yet, the opposing reaction continued, albeit less intensely. I felt I needed a physical checkup. The only one had been in 1999. I was stung by an insect (a bee or a fly) back in 1995. A swelling appeared on the back of my right shoulder. I squeezed it and it almost disappeared. It reappeared a couple of years ago and I applied the same self-help procedure. It disappeared, it reappeared. It is unsightly, especially when bathing in the sun. Well, I thought, one more reason to go to a doctor and take a physical.

I was accepted by a doctor and got an appointment. I do not trust doctors entirely. Perhaps they don't know no more what a patient is. They only grasp the concept of customer this day and age. I got first–hand experience. A doctor turned me into a vegetarian for a few months. Then I took a blood test. It was supposed to show a lower bad–cholesterol level. Instead, the new cholesterol level was almost a double–up! My bad–cholesterol was better when I was carnivorous than when I took the masochistic pain to become vegetarian! I love my bad cholesterol to be good; I hate when my good cholesterol is too good, therefore bad. Can you dig it, crocodilule? It's like digging in the mud, you know...

There is a positive in doctor's appointments. A long doctor appointment is good for meditation and positive thinking and positive goal reinforcement. While doing all those medical chores, I was writing the new 32-bit lottery software. I needed to break lines longer than 6 numbers into 6-number combinations. (Read on. You'll learn how I created the new UTIL632.EXE and how you can acquire it.) I knew I had some helpful code somewhere. I kept the hard drive from my previous computer. It has valuable source code. Problem is, my new computer is screwed up, literally. Home users cannot open the screws, only computer service technicians can. I got sooo mad at the vendor! The ensuing problem was security related. If I took my PC to a servicing outlet just for unscrewing the screws (!), some might take a preying look at the contents of my files! So, I still resort at finding info I saved on floppies. Or look up my impressive computer library. I did a lot of digging. You probably know the feeling of looking for something you badly need to find. You only find the thing after you passed the point of disgust in your search.

Five years ago I moved to this place, moving along a large number of books and computer items. I left quite a few items in large boxes stored on my open porch. They lived through torrential rains, torrid days, and mythological snowfalls. That's where I found new, forgotten treasures. I did find helpful code in books on the BASIC language. Then I discovered Warren Weaver's Lady Luck. My friend and collaborator John Civitan (author of messages in this forum) had sent me a copy of the book after I wrote about the Fundamental Formula of Gambling. I did not need to look for my old copy of the same useful book. Meanwhile, I found another treasure: A little book in Romanian. Don't they say great things come in small packages? It couldn't be truer than in this case.

The book was “The Certainties of Hazard” by French academician Marcel Boll. The book was first published in French in 1941. My 100-page copy was the 1978 Romanian edition. It all came to life, like awakening from a dream. The book presented a table very similar to the table on my “Gambling Formula” page. Then, in small print, the footnote: “The reader who is familiar with logarithms will remark immediately that N is the result of the formula: N=log(1-pi)/log(1-p).”

Hey, that's what I call the Fundamental Formula of Gambling, indeed! Actually, the author, Marcel Boll did not want to take credit for it. The formula was largely developed by Abraham de Moivre. I gave him credit on my page: Mathematics of Gambling Formula. I saw the steps in Warren Weaver's Lady Luck. Then I remembered more clearly about de Moivre and his formula from my school years. Abraham de Moivre himself probably did not want to take credit for the formula. As a matter of fact, the relation only deals with one element: the probability of N consecutive successes (or failures). Everybody knows, that's p ^ N. It's like an axiom, a self-evident truth. Accordingly, nobody can take credit for an axiom. I thought Pascal deserves the most credit for establishing the formula p = n / N. From there, it's easy to establish p ^ N.

I felt so relieved! No, nobody credited me with the FFG. I never asked myself for credit, because the FFG was so obvious! And nobody had brought to my attention that FFG was, actually printed in a book published years before my birth. My feeling is more like finding out the answer to a question. Imagine somebody asked you to represent the formula of the golden number. You search and search and can't find piece of mind. Until you come across a book. The book has the formula of the golden number. What a relief!

The common human reaction in such cases, however, is disappointment. Commonly, humans identify themselves with the Truth. Worse, our emotions become the Truth. Humans oppose the truth that a … Truth represents a relation (most often numerical), outside the humans and independent from the humans. As they say, The truth is out there!. Pure and simple. But some humans biologically identify with the truth, or what they perceive to be the truth. Admitting that their thoughts do not represent the truth would be equivalent to death. “That relation is not true, therefore I am not true, and therefore I do not exist.” That's why so many people have always resisted any ideas different from their perceived truths.

History is full of examples. I can only think now of the Dark Ages in the history of the Christian nations. The tiara-wearers in the Vatican believed they were chosen to BE the Truth. If somebody had ideas different from their perceived truths, it was interpreted as life threatening. And they saved no minute before destroying the threat. Didn't they murder brilliant minds such as Giordano Bruno? Or didn't they humiliate brilliant minds such as Galileo?

How about the ayatollah ordering the murder of Salmon Rushdie for presenting a different viewpoint?

The fundamental human sin is to identify oneself with the Truth.

II. New Free Software For The Science of Winning
While going through all this process, new software was born.
The UTIL-6.EXE has grown into UTIL632.EXE, a 32-bit Win95/98/NT4/2000 application that runs in 'character mode'. Unlike traditional Windows GUI apps, UTIL632.EXE mostly resembles a DOS program. The main advantages are: speed, speed, speed. Unlike a real-mode DOS app (16-bit), UTIL632.EXE has these advantages: size, size, size. The program can work with files up to 2GB in size!

The options of the utmost importance are 'F | Frequency report' and 'M | Make or Break'. It is also confirmed by the feedback I've received. Many already know what 'F' option can do. And many of them want the feature missing in the freeware UTIL-6.EXE. That is, they want to create automatically the 'wonder-grid'. The 'M | Make or Break' is new to everybody. The 'Make' part just carries out administrative chores. It automates the creation of different incarnations of the D6 file. The 'Break' part, however, is something else!

The 'Break' part is in option [4]: 'Break 6+ lines to 6 numbers'. As most of you know, the 'F - frequency' module creates, among other useful things, a BEST6 file, consisting of the 'top N' pairings of all the numbers in the lotto game. If you play a lotto 6/49 game, you can create a 49-line file with, say, the 'most frequent 12 pairs' for each of the 49 numbers. The 'wonder-grid' is a particular case: a 49-line file with the 'most frequent 5 pairs'. Many already know how effective the 'wonder-grid' can be. It is so effective that nobody even dare to curse me for it! Some would love to give me a blow, i.e. find a fault with my findings, the 'wonder-grid' included. The underlying math has become obvious to just about everybody who visits my site and has a basic grasp of English. I want to take now one further step towards sharper clarity (I'm wearing now computer glasses: sharper close-range reading, sharper mid-range monitor viewing; no need for far range!). The math I present now is valid regardless of the numbers in the lotto game. That is, the relations are the same, be it a 6/40 game, or a 6/49 game, or a 6/54 game, or a 6/xxx game. The only differences are in the COW ('cost of winning' = amount of tickets to play). Holy cow, how do I get to such things?!

The 'top 5' pairings for any given lotto number represent around 25% of the entire frequency of that number's pair frequencies.

• In order to hit a '3 of 6' prize, we need to add two top pairs to each lotto number. The probability is .25 ^2 = ¼ x ¼ = 1/16. Since the 'wonder-grid' has lines representing all the lotto numbers, it will contain the 6 winners of any draw. Therefore the final probability to hit '3 of 6' is 6 x 1/16 = 1 in 2.7. Paradoxically, the wonder-grid fares worse than playing an equal amount of random combinations! In a lotto 6/49 game, the probability to hit '3 of 6' is 1 in approx. 56. If playing 49 random combinations (the amount in the 'wonder-grid' for 6/49), the final probability is 49/56 = 1 in 1.14.

Random play is twice as effective as the 'wonder-grid' IF the goal is to hit '3 of 6'. But the 'wonder-grid' performs better and greatly better IF aiming at higher prizes, the jackpot especially!

•• In order to hit a '4 of 6' prize, we need to add 3 top pairs to each lotto number. The probability is .25 ^3 = ¼ x ¼ x ¼ = 1/64. Since the 'wonder-grid' has lines representing all the lotto numbers, it will contain the 6 winners of any draw. Therefore the final probability to hit '4 of 6' is 6 x 1/64 = 1 in 10.7. In a lotto 6/49 game, the probability to hit '4 of 6' is 1 in approx. 1032. If playing 49 random combinations (the amount in the 'wonder-grid' for 6/49), the final probability is 49/1032 = 1 in 21.

Now, the wonder grid is almost twice as effective as random play.

••• In order to hit a '5 of 6' prize, we need to add 4 top pairs to each lotto number. The probability is .25 ^4 = ¼ x ¼ x ¼ x ¼ = 1/256. Since the 'wonder-grid' has lines representing all the lotto numbers, it will contain the 6 winners of any draw. Therefore the final probability to hit '5 of 6' is 6 x 1/256 = 1 in 42.7. In a lotto 6/49 game, the probability to hit '5 of 6' is 1 in approx. 54200. If playing 49 random combinations (the amount in the 'wonder-grid' for 6/49), the final probability is 49/54200 = 1 in 1106.

Now, the wonder grid is almost 26 times (2600%) more effective than random play.

•••• In order to hit a '6 of 6' prize, we need to add 5 top pairs to each lotto number. The probability is .25 ^5 = ¼ x ¼ x ¼ x ¼ x ¼ = 1/1024. Since the 'wonder-grid' has lines representing all the lotto numbers, it will contain the 6 winners of any draw. Therefore the final probability to hit '6 of 6' is 6 x 1/1024 = 1 in 170.7. In a lotto 6/49 game, the probability to hit '6 of 6' is 1 in 13983816. If playing 49 random combinations (the amount in the 'wonder-grid' for 6/49), the final probability is 49/13983816 = 1 in 285384.

Now, the wonder grid is almost 1669 times more effective than random play.

Even if the combined frequency of the 'top 5' pairs is worse than 25%, the 'wonder-grid' is still much more effective than random play. Say, the frequency is just 20% (1/5). The probability to hit the jackpot is .2^5 = (1 in 3125) x 6 = 1 in 521, or 548 times better than random play.

I haven't seen the combined 'top 5' frequency go under 20%.

What if we use more than five top pairs? Evidently, the probability increases accordingly. I presented the case of 25% of the top pairings in the thread “A possible killer lotto strategy”. The top 25% of the pairings have a combined probability of at least 50%. Instead of ¼ or 1/5, we work with ½ probabilities. For example, the final probability to hit the jackpot becomes (1 in 32) x 6 = 1 in 5.3. Of course, the COW is a lot more expensive! In a lotto 6/49 game, 25% of pairs represent 48/4 = 12. We need to break the 12-number lines down to 5-number combinations, and add the corresponding lotto number to each combination. Thus, a line in the 'top 25 pairs' turns into C(12,5) = 792 combinations. Since there are 49 lines (one line for each lotto game) in the 'pairings' file, the grand total becomes 792 x 49 = 38808 combinations.

• The first issue here is to diminish the number of combinations to play. There are options. We don't need to play all the lotto numbers. You can analyze any lotto draw file. You'll notice that in at least 50% of the situations, the current draw contains at least one number from the previous one or two drawings. In my analysis of PA 6/69 game, the percentage is around 60%. The two previous drawings amount to no more than 12 numbers. So, we can go back to the 'pairings' file and delete all the lines BUT the lines representing the 12 (or fewer) numbers that came out in the previous two draws. The COW is less expensive now.

There is also the option of using the LotWon filters to diminish even more the combinations to play. For example – we can eliminate the 'worst' pairings, so that they do not slip into 'best pairing' group. UTIL632 cannot do that, but other LotWon programs can. The new 32-bit combination generators can force all the combinations contain the 'top N%' pairs while filtering out all 'bottom M%' pairs. If we select, for example, the 'bottom 25%' pairs, they only have a combined frequency of 5%. Since we play all lotto numbers, the final probability is 6 x .05 = 0.3. Therefore eliminating the 'bottom 25%' pairs diminishes the power rating of the 'best pairing' feature by 30%. I think this is the 'worst case scenario'. Sometimes the generators cannot find any combination to satisfy the two opposing criteria. No combination to play, therefore no cost of playing. But there are cases when only a handful of combinations meet the criteria. They also have a reasonable probability to hit the jackpot.

•• The second issue is the breaking of the lines in the 'pairings' file. If each line has more than 6 numbers, it is very difficult to generate manually 6-number lines (combinations). That's where the new UTIL632 comes in handy. The program does break even the longest lines into 6-number combinations. There are two options:

1) Each 'pairings' file starts with a lotto number, followed by its N pairs. The 'Break5' option of UTIL632 will write the key lotto number (the first in line) in the first position of every combination for that particular line. Then, it will break the remaining numbers (the pairs) into C(N,5) 5-number combination. In this example, the line represents the pairings for the lotto number 3:

Total: 21 combinations (C(7,5) = 21) for each lotto number.
This is the option presented in 'A possible killer lotto strategy'.

This option will always generate more combinations than 'Break5'. The COW is more expensive, but the jackpot probability is higher. This is the option employed by the new 32-bit combination generators. When enabling the 'worst pairs' filter, there are no combinations to play sometimes. Using the C(N+1,6) instead of C(N,5) option increases the chance to generate extra combinations that can hit the jackpot.

You can also sort in ascending order the resulting 'break' files. You should never edit the 'pairings' file. UTIL632 recognizes the following number delimiters: space(s), tabs, and commas (,). Also, all the lines are equal in size (i.e. number of pairs). Be sure you do not add unrecognizable number delimiters. Be sure you do not delete pairs in some lines. You will work with a pairing file named BEST6 (the default name; you can choose any other). It is the file with the 'best' pairs ('top N pairings'). It's best not to touch that file. Or, as per above, you can delete some lines COMPLETELY (e.g. leave only the 12 numbers that came out in the previous two draws). Again, delete lines completely, but do not delete numbers in lines!

The resulting files can be huge. No problem. You can check for winners thousands and thousands of combinations. The 32-bit UTIL632 can handle files of up to 2GB in size. Sure, there are those who love 'gotchas'. One can generate files for ALL the pairs in a lotto game. In the PA 6/69 game, there are 68 pairs for each number. Using the 'Break6' option, it amounts to 69 x C(69,6) = 8,271,545,568 6-number lines!!! That's more than the 2GB size limit. Let alone it would take forever to generate all the combinations. I know, gotcha-lovers, there are limits…

*** OFFER WITHDRAWN! ALWAYS CHECK THE What's New PAGE FOR AVAILABILITY AND PRICING! ***

The 2005 versions of ALL Util_* programs are FREEWARE! They are also significantly more powerful. That's how humans tend to move: always to better and cheaper! Long live Homo Sapiens, the parent of the gods! Vivat!

III. Cool Stories of the Truth - A New Mythology

"It was hot and hotter. Whatever the gods stepped on turned into sand. And more sand and more sand. And the land was an endless wavy dune of melting sand. The gods needed the Truth. The Truth said that at a higher altitude it is so cool, they would feel like the Truth. They started to build a pyramid from sand. The pyramid was growing higher and higher. It felt cooler and cooler. The gods wanted to breath the truth, and eat the truth and become the truth. 'If we make ourselves the Truth, we shall live eternal pleasure!' When they reached the pin of the pyramid, their thoughts froze to ice. And everything on land froze. And the sand was ice, and the air was ice. Then time itself froze on land. The hours were ice…

The Number lit the Truth one night. The light reached the land. It started to melt the ice. The ice melted down into rivers and seas. And the melted ice fell on the land as plants, and trees, and flowers. The ice melted down to land as butterflies, and insects, and birds, and small animals, and frightening beasts. One little snowball was left. The Number said: 'I shall make it into Awareness. I want a breathing creature be aware of Me and the Truth. I shall make a witness to My process. For I want the scribe to inscribe the process in everything that is and is not. Thus it shall be written!'

And there were men and women. And they started the tiresome labor of witnessing."
(Tladouque, “Steps to Maya Pyramid”)

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