The total number of white balls that are in the entire lottery game that you are playing.
The number of white balls that are in each drawing.
(Optional) any favorite numbers you may want to define (kept together).
Help:
If you need help finding the details about your lottery, you can get the specifics about whichever lottery you have chosen to play at their website or from the printed instructions on the back of the game’s playslip (example).
White Balls:
Determine how many white balls there are in the entire game, and if any colored bonus balls exist (powerball, hotball, etc.) Next, determine how many balls of either color are in each drawing.
Favorite Numbers:
If you have studied the behavior of certain numbers and want to group several of these numbers together because you feel they should (or should not) appear in the winning drawing, set those numbers aside as your favorite numbers.
Digital Lotteries:
If the game you’ve chosen doesn’t use a hopper of balls, because the numbers are instead computer generated, treat the main set of digits in the game as "white balls".
Some Examples (Keno, Pick5, Powerball):
If you are using this system for Keno, know that Keno generally has 80 white balls, no bonus ball, with each drawing usually being 20 balls. Generally, the number of digits in a play is defined by the player. For example, a player could choose only two numbers to play.
The examples of Keno discussed in this instruction manual will include a 15 digit play with another example having 20 digits. But please keep in mind, the number of digits per play for Keno are chosen by the player, so it could be any number of digits up to 20.
15-way plays for KENO (example 1 assumes you do have "favorites"):
For the question, "The total number of white balls in your lottery game?" please enter "80" since it's Keno.
For the question, "The number of white balls that are in each drawing?" keep in mind that for Keno, the number of digits per play are defined by the player. In this first example enter "15".
For the question, "Favorite numbers?" enter "76 3 30 55" just as an example.
Screenshot.
Once these are input, clicking the "Load Hopper" button will create an area on the screen that will simulate a rotatable hopper filled with 80 balls. Notice how the entry fields are now greyed out so that no more information can be entered. If you need to reenter information at this point, you’d need to click the "Reset Game" button to start over. Also notice that a message appears immediately below the Load Hopper and Reset Game buttons. Messages from the game will appear in this location throughout various stages of the game.
Next, we see that the hopper is simulated with six rows of balls. Notice that the favorite numbers are loaded into the first few spots of the first row. Favorites will always load into the hopper first and will remain associated with one another while the rest of the balls are allowed to tumble randomly. If the favorite numbers listed are longer than one play in length, they will wrap around into the next row and for each row that they appear they will remain associated. Also note that the sixth row isn’t as long as the other five. This is because the 15-way play doesn’t divide evenly into the 80 balls available.
Screenshot.
Below the hopper are the "Tumble Hopper" and "Display Tickets" buttons. By clicking Tumble Hopper, we see a message telling us that we’ve tumbled the balls and that we can tumble again or move on to making the finalized tickets appear. In the following screenshot, notice how the balls have gone from numerical order to a more random order.
Screenshot.
If we tumble the balls a second time, we see that the balls have rearranged into yet another random order except, again, for our favorites.
Screenshot.
When clicking Display Tickets, we see six complete plays have been made. The first play contains our favorite numbers. The final play is a combination of our four favorite numbers again with two additional repeated numbers from the rest of the set, used to fill in the missing six balls to complete the 15-ball play. In this way, we’ve created a group of six plays that have to contain the winning numbers somewhere within them.
Screenshot.
We transfer this information to the playslips by hand (seen below) and then pay for the six plays at the Keno hall all at the same time in order to play these numbers in the same game.
Screenshot.
20-way plays for KENO (example 2 assumes you don't have favorite numbers):
Fill in "80" as the number of white balls in the entire lottery game.
Fill in "20" as the number of white balls in a play, or drawing.
Transfer the plays displayed to 2 playslips, 8 plays total:
Screenshot
Powerball (example 4 assumes two sets of favorites and incorporates all the Powerballs):
Get information about Powerball from the back of playslip.
Screenshot
Fill in "69" as the number of white balls in the entire game of Powerball.
Fill in "5" as the number of white balls in a Powerball play, or drawing.
As an example, we'll include some frequently-seen white balls and some overdue white balls as favorite numbers. Fill in "16 19 26 35 42 1 3 25 45 55" into the favorite numbers text box.
Transfer the plays displayed by the software to 3 playslips, 14 plays total.
Screenshot
On the third playslip, darken in the QP selector, making a 15th play.
Screenshot
Get three more blank playslips and darken in the QP selector on 12 more plays.
At this point you have set up 26 plays over 6 playslips. Manually fill in a Powerball for each play on these playslips.
Screenshot
This will make 26 plays over 6 playslips/tickets that play every Powerball while also using up every white ball too. After being certain to use up the white balls in quick pick fashion, this method repeats various white balls within 12 additional quick picks. This further includes a set of favorite numbers that are located in the first two plays.
Screenshot
This is just an example of one way to play all the numbers involved in Powerball, or other lotteries like it. Think it over and come up with your own way to use this software.
What this is -- Play 'em all!
Typically, lotteries include a rotatable hopper containing a fairly large quantity of white balls that have all the numbers individually printed on each ball separately. From this large group of numbered white balls, a lottery drawing is constructed by randomly selecting a relatively small number of balls from the hopper. A "play" has the same number of digits on it as there are balls in a drawing. Naturally, when the sequence of numbers on a play matches the numbers in the weekly drawing, we have a winner.
Some lotteries have no hopper or numbered balls at all. Instead, the numbers are randomly generated by computer. While still other lotteries have more than one hopper with more than one pool of balls to choose from when creating a drawing. An example of this sort of lottery is Powerball, where two hoppers of balls are used to create a six-ball drawing. The first five balls of the drawing are pulled from one hopper, while the sixth "bonus ball" is pulled from the other. Apparently since the number on the sixth ball could be a repeat of one of the numbers from the first five, the final ball is color-coded to help keep things separate. In Powerball the balls used to make the final number are red, whereas the balls of the first five are all white. It is for this reason that I have had to specify what color ball I am referring to when building plays using this system. Though this program focuses on selecting white balls, it leaves open the possibility of manually including a colored bonus ball as seen above, in example 4, Powerball.
To get a feel for what this system includes, consider a lottery that uses a hopper of white balls: If a person should draw balls from the hopper and form them into a group of plays until all the balls are removed from the hopper, then it only stands to reason that this group of plays contains the winning numbers from any lottery drawing simply because all of the balls have been used. The only remaining question would be: do the winning numbers line up onto a single play or not? Also, if the player believes they have a way of predicting some of the winning numbers, then combining those numbers into a single play, or group of plays, should be allowed. The automated process provided here makes allowances for each of these considerations.
