Written by Ion Saliu on February 14, 2002.
An old myth tells that all the gods gathered secretly in the cracks of Space. They hid from Almighty Number. They debated in the cracks of Time so that Almighty Number would not hear them. They passed the law thereby called “Eternal be we and never changing”. The law was never implemented, for not even the cracks stay open forever. The morale of the legend for modern times: Dynamic is all and all is dynamic.
I touched this issue time and again. I made the case that we must look at everything dynamically, for everything is dynamic. I do not want to get into the fundamental philosophy now. I only want to remind readers that I founded my gambling theory on dynamic, while rejecting static. I started my early lottery software on the foundation of eliminating conditions, or patterns or restrictions. One day in the early 1990's WEB I was out of coffee filters! I still needed coffee, for I can't write a single line of code without at least a drop of coffee. I brewed it, but the result that day tasted terrible! That's how I came up with the concept of 'lottery filters'. The concept was not cigarette-related, although I used to be a cigarette-smoking-man (CSM).
The lottery filters are now commonly used. You can hear about them in coffee shops, in smoking or non-smoking areas. I can hear them over the Internet as well. Many visits to my web site originate in searches around 'filters'. Yet, the filters are widely misunderstood. They were meant to be dynamic. I treat them that way, for it must be the wish of Almighty Number. Alas, most people treat the lottery filters as static entities!
"Equally odds and even numbers! Two odds, four evens! Equally lows and highs! Better higher than lower! Better lower than higher, for the sword would miss your head! Better all from the same decade, for it's wrong to marry a spouse from later decades! Better to consider the lotto sums, for it's best when purses sum-up equivalently!" Then, there are those who would convert all the plows to swords to decapitate the "heretics" who believe in lottery strategies! The latter are the "inquisitors". Their popes and ayatollahs and whoever always read from their magna dogma, chapter one and last. "The probability of every lotto combination is equally and forever p. Therefore any attempt to strategize yields pee as necessary result." Poor idiots, they confuse probability p for the degree of certainty DC!
The “heretics” are faced with two very serious problems. The static filters yield an impractical number of combinations to play. In addition, the losing streaks (skips) are very difficult to track. The amount of combinations and the skips make the static filters an exercise in futility. It is a no-no.
On the other hand, the “inquisitors” have a skin-deep understanding of probability. Let them take a pick-3 lottery with a long history. Let them fry their brains studying the Fundamental Formula of Gambling (FFG). Let them bump the walls with their screaming pumpkins. For they will not find in 'a lifetime times infinite' equivalent outcomes of events of equivalent probabilities.
They can choose any lottery game. I picked pick-3 because human life is frankly and sadly short. The individual probability of a pick-3 combination is '1 in 1000'. That's a law that Almighty Number wrote. No prayer can change it, for Its Almighty cares not about prayers or curses. The individual probability, however, is static. It does not describe a dynamic phenomenon, such as a series of events in time we call “drawings” (some use the word “draws”, because they are older). Let them take groups of 1000 lottery draws. They will not find every pick-3 combination in the group. They have an equal p, why not an equal frequency? Only around 63% of the combinations can be found in any 1000-draw group. (The Fundamental Formula of Gambling is always validated in such matters.) There are combinations not to be found in 3000, 4000, even 5,000 consecutive draws! What gives?
Statically, the lotto combinations are equal in status. Dynamically, the combinations are smaller parts of a higher process guided by different laws. In FFG, p (the individual probability) is a part of a system. P is not squashed, but incorporated in a larger process. In truth, probability p is an abstract concept, a lifeless parameter. Probability comes to life in TRIALS. The same probability p but different trials N lead to different degrees of certainty DC. That's the mathematical REALITY!
I want now to find common ground between the heretics and the inquisitors. I'll do it my way, for I prefer to prove both sides wrong! I want to show that using lotto filters clearly beats random playing of the lottery. At the same time, the static filters are futile. They cannot be used in real life, for they are too expensive and lead to losses. I offered a free lottery software version of finding the combination of a given index (lexicographical order). The programs are SEQUENCE.EXE and NthIndex.EXE. I used an in-house version that can generate multiple lotto combinations and save them to file. That particular lottery software is not freeware, for it is not documented. I am the only mortal able to use it.
I applied the test to PA 6/69 lotto game (a very tough game, indeed; the jackpot odds are '1 in 119,877,472'). I generated first 1000 combinations around the mid-point index: 59,938,736. That is, the program generated combinations between the counts of 59,938,236 and 59,939,236. Next, I checked for winners in the output file against real draws in PA 6/69 lotto (350 real draws at my discretion). The 'mid-point output' achieved 3 '5 of 6' hits and 140 '4 of 6 hits'. The game odds are '1 in 317,000' for '5 of 6' and '1 in 4092' for '4 of 6'. The '5 of 6' hits were recorded in 350 x 1000 = 350,000 lotto combinations. Therefore, the 'mid-point' strategy was about 3 times better than random play in the '5 of 6' case. For the '4 of 6' case, '1 in 4092' applied to 350,000 combinations translates into 85. The mid-point strategy hit 140 times, or about one and a half times better.
The next test was applied against the 'FFG median', instead of the mid-point. The FFG median is calculated in FFG for a degree of certainty equal to 50%. The FFG median is 83,092,731 for a 6/69 lotto game. A number of 1000 lotto combinations were generated in the 83,092,231 – 83,093,231 range. The results were undoubtedly better. The strategy yielded 6 '5 of 6' hits and 238 '4 of 6' hits. Compared to purely random lottery play, the 'FFG median' strategy was 6 times better for '5 of 6' and about 3 times better for '4 of 6'.
That sounds astonishing, and it is. The lottery filters clearly and undoubtedly beat random play. On the flip side, the two lotto strategies are very costly (unless patience will be rewarded with the jackpot). Keep also in mind that these are my filters. They are static, yet they are far superior to "cigarette-butt filters" others howl about. Yet-yet, I don't have high regards for a static lottery filter, albeit my brainchild.
Only dynamic filters are valid. They are at your fingertips…
Best of luck!
Ion Saliu
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