~ Powerball Winning Strategies ~

  • Repeats & Consecutive Numbers

    You can probably guess that choosing consecutive numbers is not a good strategy. But that doesn't apply to just two consecutive numbers. The Piano Roll Pattern module in this software package shows clearly in a simple graphical form how often numbers fall in consecutive order as well as repeats between drawings. The number of repeated and consecutive numbers will surprise you, but they generally involve only a pair of entries. It is not unusual to find two consecutive entries in a winning number, but that's pretty much the limit. That's not to say that three consecutive numbers have never popped up within the same drawing. It just happens so infrequently that it would be unwise to build your picks using such a structure. The same holds true for repeated numbers. It may not be unusual to find two consecutive winning sequences that contain a common value, but seldom do we find a series of three or more drawings in a row with a common number element. Likewise, it's not very common to find a winning number sequence with more than one repeated element. These mundane tasks are best left to an automated system and are just a few of the many functions that PawnPower's Automated Numbers Selection module handles for you behind the scenes. If you are constructing your Pick Numbers manually, then you'll need to watch these properties yourself.

• Patterns

    The average individual considers Chaos Theory to be an intractable notion that is beyond analysis. The thing about chaos is that, as we look closer, patterns begin to emerge...
    "What patterns...? I can look at these numbers all day long and I don't see any patterns!"
    ... Well, just looking at a list of the winning ball numbers probably won't reveal any patterns to even the most perceptive observer. Patterns that we tease from random collections such as the lottery drawings need to be constructed from data that can be associated with the elements of the collection. Imagine laying out all the ball numbers evenly into five columns... Or as evenly as possible. As the winning ball numbers fall into these columns, a pattern can be constructed using the number of hits in each column. For example, in the Activity Listing page (above, right) the winning numbers are highlighted with a gold background color within the 5 columns on the page. Notice that the first column has 1 winner and column 2 has 1 winner. There are no winners in column 3. Column 4 has 1 winner and column 5 has 2 winners. If you lay out the number of winning cells in each column consecutively, we can construct a Pattern of "1 1 0 1 2". 'Sounds a little silly, doesn't it? Yes, it does, until we scroll through the winning numbers history and keep track of which Patterns come up most often. Some truly amazing statistics evolve in the process. Just 17% of the possible Patterns (21 out of 126) get 40% to 50% of the activity. This means that if you construct your Picks using these Patterns as a template, you will have 1 chance in 21 of using a winning Pattern nearly every other drawing. The next step, of course, is to narrow down which actual numbers to select from each column. The Patterns module is one of several steps to rough out some guidelines for our Pick Numbers. Conversely, knowing which Patterns come up as winners most often also tells us what Patterns NOT to use. 60% of the possible Patterns are not good choices based on the frequency that they appear within the winning numbers history. Of those, 60% are almost guaranteed losers. Even if you are not critical about your Patterns selections, you can almost double you odds of selecting a winning numbers combination just by avoiding the losing Patterns. That's an advantage that can not be debated. Simply scanning through the numbers history reveals that these percentages vary only by a few percent through out the entire Powerball history.
    The Patterns can be tracked just as effectively as the activity of the ball numbers. The Activity Patterns page (above, right) displays every possible Pattern grouped by type. The Patterns have "Weights" & "Activity Counters" that are associated with each Pattern as well as group totals & percentages just as the Activity Listing does for the ball numbers. The details of finding the next MOST LIKELY Patterns are very similar to singling out likely ball numbers. PawnPower's Automated selection process constructs and anaylzes these Patterns to determine not only the best Patterns to use in general, but Patterns specifically culled as likely to come up soon.

• Bar Graphs

    Graphs are great ! They allow a person to sit back and absorb the data in front of them without getting caught up in the details. Bar graphs are universal favorites... Especially one that is interactive and dynamic as opposed to a static graph of totals that just sits there. One very useful feature of this program is the ability to set things in motion. Every chart & graph has the option to scroll through the history in an animated sequence. The Bar Graph module literally springs to life when this option is employed. Start at any point in the history and watch the graph grow as the numbers history builds. Each winning number is highlighted on the graph as it progresses displaying much more information than a simple static bar graph of totals. Here's where you can literally see how your Pick Numbers should be laid out. Scrolling through the history of winning numbers reveals that the ball numbers that typically come up as winners do not seem to favor those numbers with the over all lowest activity, but the shorter bars have a way of gradually catching up to the taller bars in the long run. The range of drawings included in each frame of the mini-movie can be adjusted to include a fixed number of drawings, so that the animation displays only the variability between ball numbers within a floating, fixed length segment of the history. When set in motion, you can watch the Graph "morph" into various configurations as the snapshot of the data moves through the history.
    Another variation allows you to isolate a single element of the Pick Sequences and run the graph with just one of the five drawn white ball numbers. Compound that option with the ability to sort the History records and your graph now displays the range of ball numbers most likely for each Pick Number element. In the graph at the left, the 2nd element of the winning number has been singled out. The taller the bar is in this graph, the more likely that the corresponding ball number will be drawn for the element in the 2nd position in a sorted Pick Sequence.
    Superimpose your Pick Numbers for the next drawing or from past drawings on top of these graphs to see how your Picks measure up. Ideally you'll want to make your Picks appear on these graphs in a similar layout as the winning numbers from the past. The Bar Graph is unique in that it makes it easy to see how the winning numbers are distributed between ball numbers with a variety of activity.

• Line Graphs

    The Line Graph compliments the Bar Graph by best displaying the Activity of the ball numbers on a very short term. Display all Pick Sequence elements together or break them up to display as few as a single element. A great advantage stands out when you examine the details of this graph. The lines on the graph seem to cycle up and down on a reasonably regular interval. Running an analysis of this over various spans of the history confirms that the lines will change direction within two drawings 88% of the time and within a single drawing 62% of the time. To state the obvious, if you see a line on the graph that has been on the rise for two consecutive drawings or more, your best bet is to select a ball number that would create a falling line on the graph for the next drawing. You would have an 88% chance of being right. Choosing exactly which number that would be however is best left to the Activity Listing module or perhaps even a randomly generated value. This module is used as one of several potential starting points to rough out some guide lines for your Pick Numbers. Several Charts and Graphs in this application include the functionality for creating a new set of Pick Numbers as well as the ability to load existing Picks from previous drawings. Being able to select your Picks within a graphical environment really eases the task and sets the stage for a little intuition. Don't under estimate the power of your instinct.

• Pseudo History Files

    Wouldn't it be nice to see what the lottery's winning numbers look like a few weeks or months from now? You'd know ahead of time where the numbers were headed. The ability to see into the future would be a phenomenal advantage to anyone, and how they chose to benefit by it would only be limited by their own restraint. Thank goodness that it is not possible to see future events... yet! As far as seeing how the numbers history should look in the future, that is something that we CAN do now. This program includes a process to create "PSEUDO" history files. This is a set of randomly generated numbers that basically acts as a stand in for your actual drawings data. These files contain drawing dates and randomly selected numbers that for all practical purposes could be the actual drawings data. The actual drawings data is, after all, really nothing more than a collection of random numbers itself. All of the modules that are normally employed to analyze the actual winning numbers from the past can be run using these Pseudo files as a proxy. As far as the Charts, Graphs and other analytical tools are concerned, these files are indistinguishable from the real thing. There is however one big difference. These files can be constructed to run far into the future and can be any length up to 5000 drawings which, for the Powerball lottery, would represent drawings data well beyond the year 2037.

   What does the Bar Graph look like 5 or 10 years from now? Are the bars all very close to the same height? How do the Patterns ultimately play out? Do the Patterns that appear to show the greatest amount of activity now also do so years from now? That really would be the ultimate long term test. Do you think the analysis that you're looking at for the actual drawings history might be an anomaly? Substitute a Pseudo file for the real numbers history and put it to the test. This is as close as you can get to looking into the future without having to recruit one of Albert Einstein's theories. This tool enables you to verify questionable results and get a feel for where the numbers are ultimately headed.

• Random Picks

    If you want to add a little whimsy to your Picks, the RANDOM NUMBERS SELECTION module offers a variation of the "Quick Picks" style of numbers selection in a format that resembles a casino favorite, the slot machine. There have been many jackpot winners that have won through the use of random Picks. These folks beat all odds to wind up with a winning sequence of numbers. Their "Dumb Luck" approach appears to have worked only because there are so many millions of people buying Quick Picks. If the odds are 300 million to 1, and 300 million Quick Picks are sold, then it's not surprising that one of those 300 million tickets just happened to have the winning combination. Let's not dismiss a random approach entirely though, after all, the actual process of drawing the ball numbers is itself a random process. So, if you really want totally randomized Picks, this module will provide that function for you.
    There are some benefits to using this module rather than buying Quick Picks that are generated by your lottery retailer. One advantage is that you get to choose which sequences to keep and which ones to discard. When you buy Quick Picks, you get whatever numbers the machine generates, and that's it! You don't have the option to say, "I don't like these numbers. Let's try it again." You already know roughly what you should be looking for, such as too many numbers that are consecutive or grouped too closely, or repeated numbers and the like. Here you can generate your random picks and then run those Picks through the usual scrutiny of the other modules in this program. Weed out or alter those sequences that fall into those "very unlikely" Patterns or whose Activity Counters or ball number Weights just don't look promising. One of the most important things to check for is that your sequence of Pick Numbers is not a match to a previously winning set of numbers. If you think that you're looking at some formidable odds to pick a winning sequence of numbers, just imagine the odds of the same sequence of numbers being drawn twice. Amazingly, it has happened one time within the five white balls for the Powerball drawings at the time this software was published. PawnPower checks for duplicate number sequences in the lottery's history for all of your Pick Numbers, from any module, automatically.
    A better approach to using this module is to first decide which Patterns that you are going to use for your Picks. Then you can specify which Pattern to use as a template when the Random Numbers Selection module runs through it's paces. The randomly selected Picks will then conform to the requested Patterns as they are produced. 'A very useful mix of control and random luck.

• Automated Pick Numbers Selection

    Many folks just want some lottery pick numbers and really don't care much about the details involved in how those numbers were obtained. You don't need to study the data in any of the charts & graphs or run through any of the Analysis modules (that haven't even been discussed here) to benefit equally from the use of this application. The Automated Pick Numbers Selection module can do it all for you. Giving users access to the same tools used by the Automated process gives this application the flexibility to develop your own strategies. Even the Automated process is set up to be flexible. You can run the numbers in a completely automated mode where the only choice that you need to make is how many Pick Numbers you want to generate. You can also exercise a certain amount of control over the process by specifying your own Activity Patterns selections, adjust the restraints imposed by the Distribution Patterns process, or by over-riding the suggested directions specified by the Line Graphs.