Lottery Director Home Page
While I was working on this LottoWorld review of the lottery computer software program called Lottery Director, I talked with Joe Roberts, manager of The CDEX Group, the company that produces the program.
He showed me the program's "Triple Index" chart. Perhaps I should keep an eye on its 16 picks, he suggested, for Florida's New Fantasy 5 game.
Two nights after we talked, Lottery Director's Triple Index chart highlighted 16 numbers to play, and the five winners matched five of the 16.
As we go to press, the program did this again three more times in the game's last 15 draws.
Coincidence? Luck? Computer power? Looking at the five correct highlighted picks on the Triple Index screen, I wonder: Who cares? It's a lot cheaper to play 16 numbers in an attempt to match 5 than it is to make enough plays to cover all the numbers in the game!
Let me take a little different approach to reviewing this software because it takes a little different approach to tracking the numbers. Lottery Director is for Lotto and Powerball style games, and also for the Daily kinds of games that have three- and four-number drawings. Enter a winning number set, press a key or two, and you're immediately shown Lottery Director's pick charts for the next draw. Press another couple of keys, and you're shown each chart's past picks, with the winning numbers highlighted if they were picked by that chart.
You can also view "Win Pattern" charts showing how the numbers tended to win in more or less regular patterns. An interesting approach to this is that you have a "Pick Quality" value on your screen, showing how well the pattern's method has done so far in picking past winners. By tapping a key, you can adjust the pattern for the highest pick quality, and the program "remembers" this. Then it shows you which numbers are now inside the pattern for the game's next draw, and lets you wheel them automatically.
Players who track the charts learn which ones are having the most success at any given point for their particular lottery. It's a nice feature, and one that's handy, too, since the program offers eight ways to select numbers. The ones that are doing the best consistently are easy to find, as the program monitors them and shows their quality in colors. Users can pick and choose from among each of the eight methods, or they can let the program do the work for them.
Besides storing the player's wheeled combinations on the computer's disk (so they can be checked for winning numbers after the draw), the program tracks the player's pick methods too. It stores each new set of picks, so the player can review them and use the most successful ones to develop a playing technique for the particular game.
When finished with the chore of picking numbers, the program will offer hundreds of wheels (250 for pick 5, and 350 for pick 6 games) that will not only automatically wheel the numbers selected but will filter out tickets the user might not want to bet. The user can select the automatic filtering, or can go step-by-step through the filters. At each step, the program shows a preview of how many tickets would be eliminated by the filter.
The previews are a nice feature that makes the filtering easy to use. The user sees in advance what each filter will do to the wheeling cost and prizes. This makes it easy to do all of the necessary filtering in one pass.
In another nice feature, the program checks its filtering against the game's history to show how many actual winners passed through the filters, and how many were eliminated. It shows which wheeled combinations have matched the game's jackpots and other prizes, and which ones have yet to win. The player can then decide how much filtering is needed to reach the best balance between wins and playing cost.
Users can automatically make custom wheels using the built-in "Professional Wheeling" menu. It's done by entering some basic information, such as how many numbers you want to play and how many combinations you want to make. The program generates the wheel, checks it for missing combinations, and automatically makes any necessary repairs to the wheel.
It shows in advance how many prizes (jackpot and lower prizes) the wheel will give for matching the required amount of winning numbers. There are other menu selections for viewing, editing, importing, exporting, and managing your collection of wheels.
Lottery Director can save your bet combinations so they can be checked after the drawing for winners. It prints them out on your printer. In another nice feature, you can print just the winners above a certain prize level (for example, three or more winners) to save time and paper.
On top of all that, the program will print the "marks" directly on the game's play slips. The program also will make a new play slip layout, in case your State starts a new lottery game.
Lottery Director software includes the complete Lotto, Pick 3, Pick 4, automatic wheeling, and play slips software. The player also gets full access to the software's Web site. That was another feature I liked about the program.
The company maintains their Web site. It contains some helpful tips on how to use Lottery Director for finding the best numbers to play and how to filter bets to save a little money on a wheel without, hopefully, tossing out a jackpot ticket. People can exchange ideas and tips about playing the lottery. You can also reach the company using electronic mail.
Summing up, more than five dozen screens help track the Lotto numbers, and automatic picks help select them, wheel and filter them. Another four dozen screens with automatic picks, wheeling and filtering, are there for Pick 3 and Pick 4 games.
There are hundreds of Lotto wheels, and Pick 3/4 Straight and Boxed wheeling. The program can import wheels automatically, and test and repair them automatically. But, you might find it just as easy to make your own wheels, which you can do automatically without having to enter them by hand.
You can print Lotto play slips on your printer, as well as make a layout for a new game's play slip.
Quite candidly, it took a while before I came to appreciate Lottery Director's features and the way it tracks numbers. What you find beyond the standard reports is what makes this one different.
Its ability to track its own picking methods as well as the user's picks, is one of its unique features. This takes you up to a higher level above the numbers, where you can think more about playing. You can concentrate on how you want to play instead of on how the various numbers are doing. When you make your choice, you can let the automatic picking, wheeling and filtering do most of the work.
There are Help screens, with a handy "roadmap" that helps you navigate the menus.
I'm not keen on reading manuals, but the one for Lottery Director is the most complete I've seen. It comes in a three-ring binder, with color-coded sections for the various programs, and with illustrations of the program's screens and menus. It also has a "Questions and Answers" section.
In addition to the book's details, it has "Quick Reference" pages that steer you to topics you're looking for. It's pretty painless to read a few chapters a night to become fully acquainted with Lottery Director's methods.
The automatic wheel generation, testing and repair is a handy feature for players who want a custom wheel for the next draw, or who just want to experiment with making new wheeling systems.
The software is easy to use, with features that will be welcomed by many players.
-- Lonnie Brown, Florida Bureau Chief
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