How Does Lottery Software Work?

There is a lot of software about for lottery players – but just how does it all work?

Well, it’s usually written by Average Joe in his home office after work (no offence to Joe of course). That’s not to say some of the software isn’t good either, just that it’s mostly written by amateur programmers for their own entertainment or personal use. You won’t find Microsoft or Apple publishing an app to predict the lottery jackpot – it’s just not gonna happen 🙂

The way most lottery software works is either it attempts to predict the future results based on past results. Or it uses all kinds of filtering techniques to remove combinations that for whatever reason the author has decided are less likely to be winning ones. That really sums up nearly all of the software out there. Many programs combine both functions.

There is also other software too, such as applications to manage your lottery syndicate, or wheeling software or just basic stuff to track your own entries.

How Does Lottery Prediction Software Work?

To be honest it’s a really grey area. If you ask the lottery company, then lotteries are random and therefore totally unpredictable. So it doesn’t work.

You get mostly the same answer if you ask a maths professor. Although if you probe them a bit deeper then you’ll eventually get them to admit that it’s quite difficult building lottery machines and making them perfect. So yes, in theory it is possible that they aren’t quite as random as the lottery company would like you to believe.

Which does mean that prediction software could be useful. There just might be some useful trend in those past results that makes certain things a bit more likely to happen. That however is the level of the truth in it. A bit more likely is all you’re really likely to get. At best. If anything at all. I’ll take that however over just completely guessing and hoping for the best!

How Does Lottery Filtering Software Work?

Filtering is all about removing combinations to try and cut down the number of combinations you have to choose from. Thereby increasing your chances of winning.

The problem with filtering though is that there is a whole bunch of stupidity out there that goes right along with filtering. Most filtering software does stupid stuff. Some of it does a lot of stupid stuff, some of it just a bit.

For example, you can’t filter out the combination 7,14,21,28,35,42 just because you feel like it. Well, you can, but there’s no reason for it to be less likely to be drawn. Yes I know, it makes a pattern of multiples of 7. But why would that makes those lottery balls less likely to come out together? Did somebody tell them not to because they are multiples of 7? No, that’s just stupid.

I’m not a fan of lottery filtering software, purely because most of it does this kind of stupid filtering. There’s no logic, no sense behind it. It’s just pure human superstition. That’s not what software is for.

In Conclusion

I firmly believe that lottery software does work, if you start out by understanding what you really mean by that! The way it works depends on who wrote it and if they got caught up in stupid superstition or not. Buyer beware as always.

What About Pooling Your Resources?

The world is full of lottery pools (or syndicates as they are often called), but most members of them don’t really even realise quite what they are doing.

The typical syndicate is an office pool, with a bunch of people all funding 1 ticket each. 10 people buying 10 tickets and hoping for good things.

Nothing wrong with that either.

Of course the bigger the pool the better their chances of winning the jackpot. But the more people there are then the more people who will want a share of that jackpot when they win it.

That’s the potential downside, and the key thing that you need to balance with the game you are playing. There’s no point playing a Pick 3 game with 10 players, and finding the best win you can walk away with won’t even buy you a mug of proper coffee!

It’s also difficult to run a pool (ever tried?) – man, it is hard work. You have to chase everyone for money, and do far more admin work than you ever thought. And people only ever say thanks if you happen to win..! No thanks. Which is why the online syndicates have taken off. You can play most of the big games online somewhere, with EuroMillions being one of the most popular for pool play because it’s got such a big jackpot (often 100M+). For EuroMillions, you can probably find a syndicate online here. Look for one playing at least 50 tickets or your odds aren’t really that much better.

But there are other game choices for online pools too. You don’t have to stick with the usual big ones. You can even play in a Thunderball syndicate if you like – it’s funny because I don’t know anyone who plays Thunderball, yet the game launched in June 1999 so has been running for ages – so it’s obviously pretty popular with a lot of regular players somewhere. Know anyone who plays it?

Pooling clearly works – you often see syndicates winning jackpots – but there’s nothing miraculous about it. If you buy more tickets your chances of winning go up. It clearly works because it can’t not work, if you see what I mean. But consider using software to enhance your chances too. You want to give yourself every edge possible after all.

Can Software Enhance Your Chances Of Winning?

I get asked this a lot. Can lottery software really make a difference? How many jackpots have you won? etc etc

The point is, that creating something that is perfectly random is next to impossible. And that applies to lottery draw machines too. Yes, you can make one that looks very random. But can you absolutely guarantee that it will never show any kind of trend of bias to any particular number?

As humans we are not perfect, and neither are the designers of draw machines. They do a good job. They do their best. And the lottery companies accept that it’s “good enough”.

But that still leaves us with a useful ‘unknown’ factor. Draws can in theory show some form of predictability. It’s near impossible to prove it’s there, you just kind of have to take a leap of faith on that one – but the whole point is that it is realistically possible.

Once you accept that, then using software that looks for trends is a no-brainer. No, even the best  software in the world can’t pluck a jackpot out of the air every week. That’s not what I mean – but it is perfectly feasible that using good software can give you a slight edge that you wouldn’t have otherwise. When you’re dealing with such big odds against you that’s something that can make a difference between winning and losing.

Yes of course you still need luck. Plenty of it. But given the choice of just totally randomly picking numbers, or being guided by some lottery software that may be giving you a better chance – it’s pretty obvious to me which is the best approach. Even more so if you get some fun out fiddling around with the software like I do – that geek fun is worth the ticket price of playing alone 🙂

So why not join me, don’t just ‘quick pick’, have more fun with it and possibly get a better chance of winning on top. It makes sense.