No luck in last two drawings, jackpot grows big!

We blanked on the last two drawings but nobody has won the jackpot in as many weeks which now grow to near record levels at $176 million.

Welcome to our newest pool member Dawn Gruenwald! Dawn joins the pool near our "lucky month" of October. It was in October of 2006 that we were one number away from winning $600,000 and that night pulled in our biggest win at $321.

Pool financials are up to date. (See link down and to the right.)

Pool Back on Track....we win $24!

We won $24 this evening on 4 hits of the powerball.

Nobody won the jackpot and we'll hope for the same on Saturday as the pot will eclipse $100 million next Wednesday.

Pool member payments are up to date as of Wednesday evening. Thanks! John

No winners - next participation date July 2nd

The Pool pulled in no winning numbers for this past Wednesday evenings drawing. The jackpot rises to $75 million and if nobody wins Saturday we'll be looking at a $100 million jackpot for next Wednesday's July 2nd drawing.

If you haven't paid your dues, please do so if you want to participate. Pool financials are up to date as of this morning.

Thanks! John

Pool Wins $48, Plans Saturday Participation

We won $48 Wednesday night with the spreadsheet successfully picking out of its top 10 choices for the powerball. During the random mix of those 10 out of 42 numbers the correct powerball came up in 5 times and one time matched with a whiteball giving us $12 on that line of numbers. The rest were $9 straight powerball wins - normally $3 - but tripled with the 3x powerplay purchase.

The jackpot rises to $178 million and because of this lofty number - we're planning a Saturday participation. I've revamped how the spreadsheet picks the whiteballs for that drawing so it will be interesting to see how well it performs. Out of 360 number sets generated only 9 passed all the tests I run on each set - so that tells me it's being much more selective in what number sets it chooses. We'll see if that gives us better results with whiteball picks.

Pool Wins $30 & Gears Up for Next Big Drawing!

A big welcome to our new members! Patrice Smoote, Latoya Moore, and Pam Collins! The more members the merrier! (And the better chance we have of winning something significant!)

We won $30 last Wednesday night (April 23rd) on a correct computer pick powerball drawing. The multiplier was a whopping 10x increasing our earnings from $3 to the $30 take.

Because of other obligations I had that evening, I opted to use all computer picks for our 70 picks rather than using spreadsheet generated numbers. This evening I plan to go back to the spreadsheet and see what Powerball numbers it would have predicted should be at the top of the list. If last week's PB was near the top? It sure would be a disappointment since the bonus 10x multiplier comes up once in a blue moon when the promotion runs.

Cross your fingers for a lucky drawing for the pool this Wednesday! The jackpot is approaching $200 million! All banked balances, payments, and IOUs should be up to date. Click on the "Pool Financials" link to the

Pool blanks, but gears up for next drawing

Last Wednesday we had a night of bad luck, earning zilch from our 73 number picks. Nobody won the jackpot for that evening and the same holds true for this past Saturday, so the jackpot now climbs to $91 million for this coming Wednesday.

The good news is that we still have $166 in our pool earnings' bank to contribute to expanded number set purchases. I believe we are also on track to have a record year for the pool in earnings. We've already won $362 - just $200 behind our 2007 total - and $200 more eclipse our initial record year of $748. (But remember we played nearly every drawing at first that year too.)

Pool banked and direct payments are up to date. Please check the comments column to see if you owe for any past drawings.

Thanks for your continued support of the pool!

John

Pool Pulls In Nearly $100!

We had an excellent evening tonight - in fact our third best in pool history - pulling in $92 in winning picks. I opted to only use $2 of our $98 in previous earnings for tonight's drawing - so now our pool piggy bank will bulge with $196 in earnings! As the jackpot grows? So will the number of extra picks we have for each drawing.

The spreadsheet decided that 33 should be number two on the list as one of the best picks for the power ball and chose it 7 times - giving us $12 and $16 wins to pull in the the $92 total.

Very Good Results Tonight

The Pool had it's 2nd best showing for the year this evening, winning $64 total. Out of the 42 possibilities, 8 was the power ball and the spreadsheet successfully predicted that was in the top five of power ball picks and randomly chose it in 5 different picks out of the 70 that we had available. Our banked earnings rise back up to near $100 again.

No winners for the jackpot which now rises to over a quarter of a BILLION dollars for Saturday's drawing. If we have no winners then? The jackpot will be at record levels by next Wednesday!

Banked and payments otherwise are up to date.

Major Update to Spreadsheet in Progress

Yes, we're IN for this Wednesday's big $178 million jackpot drawing.

I'm in the process of performing some major tweaks to the lottery picking spreadsheet - hopefully to be completed before tomorrow nights drawing. Here's what I'm working on: The Delta number analysis looks at one number and difference between it and the next. The spreadsheet already looks at the Deltas between the 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd, etc - whiteball numbers - but a new analysis will examine the Delta between the whiteball number that was picked in that particular position and the previous number. My analysis shows that range falls within a particularly range over 85% of the time for each position over the life of the drawings.

Speaking of life of the drawings. Never too late to learn something. It turns out that one of the reasons that 54 and 55 seemss to be on the low end of probability in getting picked over the life of the lottery is that they weren't added until August 28th of 2005. Because of that I went back and changed my statistical analysis to examine only the draws since that time.

I'm also working on a variance acceptance factor too. Right now, if the analysis of a a set of numbers doesn't pass all the tests I perform - the whole set gets thrown out. With the new rules if the set passes all but one of the tests? It's good to go. Which might help us if, say everything looks good for the number set except for maybe the sum of the first five which might be just inside or outside a given range.

A Winning NIght

The pool won $35 on a 1 in 290 chance of getting 3 of the 5 whiteballs correct for one pick. We missed any correct hits on the powerball - which would have impacted our earnings significantly since the multiplier was 5X.

Our banked earnings equal $114 now - so we still have a nice stash to continue to buy extra tickets with as the jackpot rises towards near record levels.

Member payments record is up to date as of this evening.

Thanks. John

Jackpot up to $133 million, Pool is IN for Wednesday

Nobody won the jackpot Saturday night, raising the cash payout to over $65 million now. The pool will participate in Wednesday's drawing, using some of our cash reserve to boost our ticket count and hopefully our chances of pulling away from our disappointing drawing last Wednesday.

Banked balances and payments are current as of this post.

Good luck to us all! John

You win some, you lose some.

Lady Luck was frowning on the pool this evening as we drew no winning number combinations from this evening's drawing. The results weren't really surprising since the sum of the whiteballs was outside the expected range and two of the three whiteballs weren't even in the predicted mix for the first five. Finally, the chosen powerball happen to be one that was far down the list of suggested higher probability pulls. If you miss the powerball? You're odds skyrocket that you'll win nothing.

Still... we have $119 in our pool reserve from past wins for future drawings - so if nobody wins the jackpot Saturday we''ll try again Wednesday for better results. Expected jackpot range should be in the $130 million range.

Pool financials should be up to date soon after this post. Thanks. John.

No Guts, No Glory

After Saturday's no-jackpot-won drawing, for a test of the spreadsheet predictive abilities on the powerball I put in Wednesday's powerball, pushed the button on the lottery spreadsheet and once again, the powerball number that was drawn was in the top 10 the spreadsheet would predicted would occur. This is the third time in the past couple of weeks I've performed such an exercise, the last one being last Wednesday's draw where we pulled in $69 - our fourth best win in our history.

With these recent successes I've decided to choose 10 powerball numbers out of the pool of 42 to throw into the mix. It's a risky endeavor, but also has the potential for great rewards since the chances are a duplicate, winning powerballs would get chosen by the spreadsheet is greater than say if the pool I was pulling from was 21 numbers - typically the quantity I've used in the past. So with this method what I'm hoping will happen is that we will pull in more $69 (or greater) nights. The alternate scenario is that we'll win nothing. But, as the title of this post suggests? "No guts, no glory." Keep your fingers crossed for Wednesday's drawing! We'll have a nice number of tickets since we got over $100 in our earnings balance to draw from. Thanks. John

Happy Valentines KW Lottery Pool!

The pool scored its fourth best drawing in our history pulling in $69 this evening on 7 successful number sets. We had 5 sets that had the correct powerball of 30 and an additional 2 sets that had the powerball and the whiteball correct too. Odds are about 1 in 600 that we'd be that successful so this really was an excellent overall night for us. I only used an additional $4 from the lottery pool bank for extra numbers this evening, so now our banked balance is an admirable $161! This gives us some powerful options for future drawings and the amount of tickets we can purchase.

All banked balances are now up to date. If we covered you for this drawing? Please return those funds at your earliest convenience. No jackpot winners for tonight's drawing so that figure now rises to $86 million. If nobody wins Saturday, we'll be over the $100 million mark for next Wednesday's drawing.

Powerball 30 was the 3rd highest selection out of a list of 42 choices according to the spreadsheet giving that number an added nudge based on the predictions it would show up under four different factors - the difference between this powerball and the last, overall frequency over the life of all powerball drawings, frequency in the last 40 drawings, and the next predicted date the number would be pulled. If the spreadsheet continues to make such accurate powerball predictions I'm very tempted to reduce the overall powerball number set drawn from even further from the present 15, which would significantly increase our chances of winning a bigger combined total of money with multiple powerball matches. The risk is that on an evening where the powerball numbers don't follow these loose statistical patterns - that we would completely blank and win nothing - which is exactly what happened with our previous drawing.

We didn't score so well with whiteball predictions otherwise our earnings had the potential to be significantly higher. I threw out 30 - because it had been picked in the last drawing (the majority of drawings don't include a previous number drawn) and 51 based on it's very low overall frequency over the life of all drawings. The good news is that 13 other numbers we tossed, didn't show up either and the fewer white balls you have to pull from the overall pool of 55, the better.

Thanks! John

Streak Broken, No Winners Tonight

We had a dismal performance on the drawing this evening - pulling no winners from the powerball group which pretty much dashes ones hopes of winning anything - unless you're fortunate enough to draw 3 correct whiteballs in a group. (We did that last week.)

So we'll cross our fingers, rejuggle the numbers, and hope to get another shot at it next Wednesday.

Payments will be up to date soon after this post.

Thanks!

John

Three Straight Winning Evenings for Pool

We won $35 this evening from picking 3 of the 5 white balls right in a number series. The odds say that there is a 1 in 250 chance of doing that. So out of 84 picks - the lottery spreadsheet clearly beat the odds again - though not at the level I'd hoped it would.

We've won cash in 3 of our last 3 drawings. For a total earnings of just over $100 this early in the year and because of that we still have over $100 in our earnings bank to bolster future picking sessions.

The Powerball website is reporting there was a jackpot winner in the state of Louisiana - so we'll rejoin the drawings in about 3 weeks.

The payment spreadsheet is up to date as of this evening. Thanks for your support! John

We win $39 tonight!

The lottery picking spreadsheet really strutted its stuff this evening by predicting that the top number for the powerball pick would be 24 and that's exactly the number that showed itself today. When I saw that this number really stood out among the rest as I was working with the numbers this evening I threw it a few more times into the mix so that it had a better chance of being pulled when the numbers were randomly generated out of the overall pool of powerball numbers I'd selected. (21 out of the 42). It worked. 24 showed up on four different number picks generating the money we earned this evening. I should have trusted my gut and included it with more frequency. Not that we would have won the jackpot this evening but our take would certainly have been higher probably in the multiple hundreds of dollars. The white ball numbers were a little on the weird side too. The sum of the five was way below average - so that threw the spreadsheet off on it's predictions - plus the we had yet another 2 even, 3 odd pick - the tenth 2/3, 3/2 combination in a row - which is highly unusual based on past drawings.
The great news is that we are still above $100 in our banked funds with this latest win which bodes well for us in having a better chance of continuing that trend with future draws. We also had excellent participation in this drawing - with 28 people joining our group for this evening's drawing. Welcome, Mr. Moody, to the KW Lottery Pool!

Banked balances and payments are up to date. Thanks! John

Pool starts off 2008 right with a $28 win

We pulled in $28 off two good number sets this evening. (One powerball number right and one powerball plus one whiteball.) Watch this space for jackpot updates and don't forget to check the "Pool Financials" link to see if you owe money for this last drawing. (See the "Notes" column on the spreadsheet. Thanks! John

Happy New Year KW Lotttery Pool!

Many people didn't get at opportunity to tender their dues - or we didn't know if the jackpot was going to be reset again. Even so, we do have a nice surplus in our winnings pot of $105 - so I'll use that to fund those regular participants for this coming Wednesday's (January 2nd) drawing. You'll see a notation as such in the "Notes" column in the "Pool Financials" link to the right. Please plan to repay that $2 or $5 amount when we got back from the break.

We had a good year in 2007 - winning a total of $562. Our largest single night win was $68 - which we accomplished about a month ago. We fared a little better our first year as a pool in 2006 - winning a total of $748. Our biggest win to date occurred that year with a $331, one number away from winning $200,000 win on October 18th.

If we won more in 2006 than 2007, some might be wondering why I keep changing the spreadsheet and don't go back to the "old" ways of picking numbers because it appeared more lucrative. Though I don't have the exact records to prove it because the 2006 records are not complete I think if we remember that we participated in more drawings at first - every Wednesday and Saturday - plus the fact that we also participated in every drawing regardless of the jackpot level - that could account for the difference in winnings as well. More drawings - more chances to win. Of course that also equates to more coming out of your pocket for drawings. Everybody was required to ante up $5 too - we didn't have a $2 participation level - and we had more initial participants too. We average about 25 to 30 people now. Back then when the pool first started we had up to 50 - sometimes a little more. I think these factors could account for the difference in winnings and not so much whether or not the methods of picking numbers were better.

Something else to remember about our 2007 "season." We also had an unbelievable run of eight straight winning participation weeks in a row - something else that tells me we are heading in the right direction with how the spreadsheet picks numbers.

I'm comfortable with our performance and overall results for 2007 and hope you are too. As always, I'm open to your feedback about the pool. I'm looking forward to our best year in 2008 - crossing my fingers, doing the lucky dance (sorry....no public demonstrations of that), and crunching the numbers to hopefully bring us some big wins for this year. We're an interesting mix of people and I think we'd have some great stories to tell if we hit it big!

Thanks again for your outstanding support of the Kendall-Whittier Lottery Pool the past year two years! Without it the pool simply wouldn't exist!

Sincerely,
John