As you remember three months ago I accepted a challenge, that I am going to hit the second prize at "Cash 5" a game that picks 5 random numbers out of 43. The idea was to prove a point, that you have a better chance to get a lottery prize if you play a reduced lottery system than just randomly picking some numbers. The guy that challenged me said that he randomly picked 200 sets of 5 numbers between 1 and 39 and watched them for two years and never managed to get 4 numbers on the same line (the second prize). I told him that I can use the same $200 but play them my way, using a few reduced lottery systems and I am going to hit the second prize. Since "California cash 5" was played twice a week, that would mean I was going to watch my numbers for 200 consecutive draws. The odds were actually against me, since my "Cash 5" has 43 numbers, not 39. To make it a little bit more fair I decided to watch my numbers for an extra 50 draws. Even this way the odds were against me.
Anyway, a few days ago (on March 28) I've got TWO second prizes on "Cash 5", a Pennsylvania lottery game. The numbers were: 3, 7, 10, 16, 37.
You can have a look at the article published on January ("I accept the challenge"). Those of you who watched the challenge and saved the numbers as I adviced you back then so I cannot be accused of cheating realize now that it's for real. Of course one can argue that this doesn't prove anything, it was just luck. So I am going to push my "luck" further and say that I am going to hit at least one second prize by the end of the 250 draws.
Please note that I've got many more third and fourth prizes. Yet, the losses are devastating so far and if I don't hit the jackpot I am going to lose (this is only on paper, I am not actually spending $200 per day on lottery). This should not come as a surprise since we all know that the odds against the lottery players are staggering.
However, there are many people that play together, using only a few bucks per day (lottery pools) so nobody is going to get broke by playing. For these people playing $50-100 or more at random or using reduced lottery systems makes a huge difference.
