An Introduction to Lotto Filters

This is a fine introduction to Lotto Filters by Robert Perkis.

Originally published:   04/22/1998

   ... and just as helpful today.

The majority of lottery players tend to think of filters as a flawed method of saving five dollars.  Indeed, lottery publications have repeatedly flailed us with horror stories of fabulous prizes filtered away.

On the other hand, as proponents of filtering gleefully point out, players running auto filtering software are likely to save more by filtering than they are likely to win in prizes.  Unfortunately neither group fully understands how to make filtering pay off.

Welcome to the one room school house of lottery.  Where all levels of lottery knowledge conflict in their attempt to gain acceptance as the perfect solution.  I make no such claims, because what follows is simply one of many possible strategies you may care to try when you reach this level of lottery education.

There is nothing magical about wheeling, any more than a fisherman's net is magical because it catches fish.  A wheel is a net woven of numbers to catch lottery prizes.  A net can be full of holes and still catch fish because the holes don't fit the majority of fish looking to escape.  Just as the professional fisherman tries to allow dolphins and turtles to escape, we rig our net to capture only the best prizes.  Here's how to do it ...

Begin with a change of mind set.  Instead of buying the best pathetic wheel you can afford, select the wheel you would play if you had a government grant to prove anyone could win the lottery.  Give yourself a pie-in-the-sky budget hundreds to thousands of dollars over what you play now.  It's just for starting.  You'll finish with what you can afford.

Select a wheel that will play all or almost all the numbers and guarantee a prize.  Such as the "3 if 6 in 49 numbers", 168 ticket wheel, or a "4 if 6 in 49 numbers", three thousand ticket wheel.  It is impossible to have a six number ticket without having three or four of the winning numbers within the larger field, therefore if a big win is going to come out of the wheel, it will be built on top of the guaranteed winning ticket(s) within.

Most filter programs provide an easy method to bulk filter wheel combinations to remove the less likely tickets and yet allow for a myriad of ways to win.  This is foolish because your odds have not been improved for the price you still have to pay.  Look at it this way.  When the drawing is over you can examine the winning number and note what the filter setting should have been.

Let's look at two drawings of the Florida 6/49 ...

   04/18/98      05-06-10-20-31-42
   04/11/98      09-13-20-25-32-48

Check the  04/18/98  draw.  Here are the characteristics of the winning numbers:

• The winning combination has a Sum of 114;
• There are two Odd numbers and four Even numbers;
• There are four Low numbers (below 25) and two High numbers;
• There are two consecutive numbers (05 and 06);
• There are two numbers with the same Last Digit (10 and 20 have a 'zero');
• One number was adjacent to a number from the prior draw (31 is adjacent to 32);
• One number repeated from the prior draw (20);
• Two sets of the numbers have the same size gap between them (the gap between 20 and 31 = 10, and between 31 and 42 = 10);
• Also, five of the six numbers have appeared in the last ten drawings.

If you were to play a large wheel, only a comparably few of your total tickets would contain the above winning characteristics.  That means you only had a small chance to win, no matter how many tickets you had in play.

It is better to have ten tickets that match the winning combination inside some filter settings, than hundreds that don't.  With this in mind, it is better to select specific filter settings resulting in only a comparably few tickets that apply to the winning ticket, than to lose hundreds each draw just to get the same small chance in a few more drawings.

I do not have any idea how you should arrive at specific filter settings for your game.  I do know it is easier to pick the more likely one out of three: 2/4, 3/3 or 4/2 Odd/Even, than it is to pick six winning numbers.  The idea is to set yourself up with maybe six to ten simple choices, where getting them mostly right will give you a good chance to win a major prize.

For example, you looked at the Sums being drawn for the past drawings. ie: The 04/11/98 drawing had a Sum of 147 and you decide a good range of Sums for the next draw could be from a Sum Range of 100 to 150.  This simple choice could very well reduce your total ticket investment by half.  Maybe you looked at the 04/11/98 3/3 Odd/Even mix and decided to go with 3/3 again and 2/4 as a likely change.  Again your total number of tickets may be reduced greatly.  Maybe you looked at the odds of two numbers having the same last digits and allow both None and One set to pass, but not more than that.  If you have ten choices and some don't give you a strong feeling either way, just don't apply those filters.

Not all lottery software offers filters and those that do can vary greatly in how you apply them.  For example: the most excellent (...) software allows you to setup how you want your tickets to look, and then randomly selects from the ether of the lotto number universe, tickets that fit your criteria.  I prefer to start with a wheel where I know there is a winning ticket of some prize in there to begin with.  I know it's in there, I just have to find it.

When it comes to wheeling and filtering, the best I know of on the market today, is the Lottery Director software.  No matter what your current level of lotto education, you should stop by the LDIR web site and download the Free Wheeling software because the time will come when you will "discover" the exciting unique value of this product.  Of course, while this free "stand-on-its-own" software can be very useful to make wheels of your own, the value of adding it to the full Lottery Director package is beyond measure.

With little more than reading the instructions, you can take wheels from other software, web sites, books, etc. and enter them into the Lottery Director software and then apply the filters of your choice to the resulting combinations.  I know you can work this out by hand on scratch paper, but it is truly amazing to have all your filters report their results in just seconds.  You can go back and try running the filters several different ways and see which you like the best.  You can also check what happens when you apply your filter settings to the past lotto history of your game.  Would you have won or eliminated all chance to win?  Without this feature you will never know.

Some lottery programs use picking methods that do not lend themselves easily to concurrently setting up filters.  If you presently have software doing a good job of picking and wheeling, but does not offer filters, you can put those same wheels into Lottery Director and then easily enter your numbers (as picked by the other program) into Lottery Director, and it will put them on the wheel so you can filter them as you like.

You're allowed to have more than one tool in your tool box, you know.  On the other hand, it is very easy to become a collector of lottery software, forever buying new, never learning what your tools are capable of, ever disappointed when winning doesn't come easy.  No lotto program is more than the tools you need to work in your craft.  Take the time to master what your software can do.  If your software can't do what you want, see if the reverse of its result is an acceptable answer.  ;-)  An artist can paint a masterpiece with a toothbrush, a dilettante produces mediocre work with the best of tools.

The only downside is, you might filter out a million dollar winning ticket, because you are starting with so many tickets. This may happen more than once.  Don't let this get you down, because it just shows you are on the right track.  Refine your filter choices better and you will win more often.  The idea is to filter so well you will improve your actual chance to win (by having more field matching tickets), and you will save more and cover more than your old "pass everything" system.

To sum up, one way you might try to win at lottery, is to target only the top prizes.  Do so by playing all the numbers, on a wheel so large you never could afford to play it, but is likely to (or guarantees to) win a prize.  Filter out what you don't want, and keep what you can afford. Ignore minor prizes you may filter out and didn't need to win anyway.  Don't even try for the minor prizes, let the wheel "guarantee" them, while you play to win!  Study the broad trends of the game and determine which way the ball bounces for each filterable choice.  Apply relatively tight specific filters and reap the reward when your choices are correct.

Good number sorting + good wheeling + good filter settings = best playing cost to winnings ratio.

Play to WIN!

Good luck to you.

Robert Perkis