A Fresh Look at Lotto Filtering (Part 1)

Filtering: Its Purpose

Here is a simple introduction to filtering.

Filtering is not a method to 'improve the odds' or anything like that.

It is a way to control your playing cost. You do it by choosing the kinds of combinations you want to play.

Filtering helps you to meet your budget, with an additional benefit: you know your winning chances at all times.

Filters always work like this:

• They allow things you 'want' to pass through, so you can keep them.
• They reject things you 'do not want', so you can eliminate them.

Instead of filtering, you could take your red pencil and cross out combinations randomly until you meet your budget. But then you have no knowledge of how your combinations work.

For example, if you wheel some numbers and then remove some combinations at random, you will not know what you are doing to your wheel. Your wheel's original guarantee is no longer valid. You would have to re-test your combinations against the game's full range of combinations, which is an extra step. This raises the obvious question: Why did you wheel your numbers?

With filtering, you can wheel your numbers in the same wheel, and then remove combinations by passing them through one or more filters. You know how you are playing through the entire process. Your filtering choices are a natural part of your planning. They can be as fresh in your mind as your wheeling choice (or you can have them documented).

For example, you can pass your wheeled combinations through filters. This reduces your playing cost. Then, if the game's winning combination passes the same filtering, your wheel will work as planned (for example, a Full wheel, Abbreviated, or Key wheel).

'Random' reductions and 'Filtered' reductions both lower the playing cost by removing combinations. They both lower the wheel's overall guarantee. But 'Random' reductions can easily destroy any capability to match the game's prize with the combinations that remain; 'Filtered' reductions retain the prize matching with the combinations that remain. The two techniques simply have different effects on the combinations you are keeping (and are paying for, if you play them).

When you reduce your wheeled combinations at random, you are ignoring the wheel's design. In effect you are saying, 'Give me something less than the original guarantee, and leave it to chance.'

When you filter your combinations, you are supporting the wheel's design, but you are supporting it only for certain parts of the wheel. In effect you are saying, 'Give me the original guarantee, but only for the set of combinations I want to play.'

There's another way to see this. Suppose we run a wheel with a known '100%' guarantee. By eliminating lines, we get 'something less than 100%' from the wheel. Consider what is known, and what is not known, in the resulting combinations.

With Random removal of lines, the overall wheel has 'something less than 100%'. We have no knowledge of what 'something less than 100%' means. We do not know what kind of prize the remaining combinations will cover, unless we re-test the combinations. If the winning combination matches the original wheel, we have no idea about whether it will or will not give us a winning match with the remaining combinations.

With Filtered removal of lines, the overall wheel has 'something less than 100%'. But there is still a part of the wheel that retains the 100% coverage of the prize. The player knows that part of the wheel. If the winning combination matches the original wheel, and if it passes the same filters that our own combinations have passed, we will have a 100% match with that winning combination.

CDEX