Stragegies for the Mathematically Challenged
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September 20th, 2013 at 10:32:30 AM
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The games for which the most worthless betting systems have been devised are state lotteries, and you will find a very large collection for sale here. This is Amazon's list of best sellers in the "lotteries" category. While some of these books are entertaining reading, nearly all give worthless advice for winning a lottery. There is only one book among them that is devoted to exposing their flaws. It is never very high on the list and sometimes drops off the list entirely. Readers are more interested in winning a lottery than learning that there is no magic formula for doing so. That book, if you can find it, is "A Player's Guide to Lotto Strategies."
The list is updated hourly and the titles bob up and down, but Richard Lustig's "Learn How To Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lottery" is generally at or near the top. It retains its ranking despite the fact that the majority of its reviews are extremely negative. Richard has a publicist who has gotten him on a number of TV shows and his self-confidence and skill as a presenter convince viewers that he can deliver the goods. He lives in Florida and claims to have won seven lottery jackpots, but closer investigation reveals that two of these were major prizes on scratch-off tickets and three were in Florida Fantasy Five. This is an easy-to-win lottery and usually there are multiple winners. The record is 99 winners on an especially popular combination. Richard's motto is "Luck has nothing to do with it," but I think that luck has everything to do with it.
Closely following generally is Gail Howard's "Lottery Master Guide." Gail is a former commodities trader who knows a little mathematics but not enough. She has assembled a large database of winning combinations, has deduced their characteristics, and has devised rules for picking winning combinations, not realizing that all losing combinations have exactly the same characteristics. Near the top are the only strategy books with any real value. They are "Combinatorial Lottery Systems (Wheels) with Guaranteed Wins" by Iliya Bluskov and its companion volume for pick-5 lotteries. A lottery wheel is a combinations generator that takes a set of numbers and combines them in various ways to create betting tickets. It has been shown that doing this can increase the player's expectation, but only slightly. Some sample results, though not the computations themselves, are given in "A Player's Guide."
Most of the systems in these books are based on common mathematical fallacies or the proposition that numbers drawn in a lottery are somehow predictable. Readers who are not mathematically challenged will have no trouble seeing through this, but a very large number write favorable reviews based not on their results, but on believing what the author tells them.
In addition to these there are two that are sold from their own web sites and those of sales affiliates. They carry a $99 price tag and do not even contain original material, but material plagiarized from other web sites. They are outright scams. Caveat emptor!
The list is updated hourly and the titles bob up and down, but Richard Lustig's "Learn How To Increase Your Chances of Winning the Lottery" is generally at or near the top. It retains its ranking despite the fact that the majority of its reviews are extremely negative. Richard has a publicist who has gotten him on a number of TV shows and his self-confidence and skill as a presenter convince viewers that he can deliver the goods. He lives in Florida and claims to have won seven lottery jackpots, but closer investigation reveals that two of these were major prizes on scratch-off tickets and three were in Florida Fantasy Five. This is an easy-to-win lottery and usually there are multiple winners. The record is 99 winners on an especially popular combination. Richard's motto is "Luck has nothing to do with it," but I think that luck has everything to do with it.
Closely following generally is Gail Howard's "Lottery Master Guide." Gail is a former commodities trader who knows a little mathematics but not enough. She has assembled a large database of winning combinations, has deduced their characteristics, and has devised rules for picking winning combinations, not realizing that all losing combinations have exactly the same characteristics. Near the top are the only strategy books with any real value. They are "Combinatorial Lottery Systems (Wheels) with Guaranteed Wins" by Iliya Bluskov and its companion volume for pick-5 lotteries. A lottery wheel is a combinations generator that takes a set of numbers and combines them in various ways to create betting tickets. It has been shown that doing this can increase the player's expectation, but only slightly. Some sample results, though not the computations themselves, are given in "A Player's Guide."
Most of the systems in these books are based on common mathematical fallacies or the proposition that numbers drawn in a lottery are somehow predictable. Readers who are not mathematically challenged will have no trouble seeing through this, but a very large number write favorable reviews based not on their results, but on believing what the author tells them.
In addition to these there are two that are sold from their own web sites and those of sales affiliates. They carry a $99 price tag and do not even contain original material, but material plagiarized from other web sites. They are outright scams. Caveat emptor!
September 20th, 2013 at 2:20:06 PM
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Of course there's a system for winning Lotto - first, you get your base numbers from The Original Lucky Three Wise Men book, then you cross-reference this with the RedDevil Combination DreamBook Almanac, and confirm the results with Grampa's Lucky Number Dream Book...wait, what? I get three different sets of numbers for the same lottery? But that's not possible - they advertise with a full page ad in The Old Farmer's Almanac and everything!
Actually, the only "system" for Lotto is how to pick numbers that few other people will choose, so your chance of winning the whole thing increases. Even then, it's not particularly accurate; I would have expected at least one non-Quick Pick to have the numbers from the $399 million Powerball draw (from a couple aged 35 and 32, with a 7-year-old child, with the ticket purchaser born on the 19th, and the other two on the 7th and 22nd).
Actually, the only "system" for Lotto is how to pick numbers that few other people will choose, so your chance of winning the whole thing increases. Even then, it's not particularly accurate; I would have expected at least one non-Quick Pick to have the numbers from the $399 million Powerball draw (from a couple aged 35 and 32, with a 7-year-old child, with the ticket purchaser born on the 19th, and the other two on the 7th and 22nd).
