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