Hi BP & HalfBee

I don't know if you guys have heard of the EuroMillions lottery but I have been trying to work out good patterns for the £42,000,000 or $78,000,000 tax free draw this Friday evening.

If you guys feel like it, could you possibly have a go at predicting using BP's patterns? I have also been following HalfBee's results for the California Fantasy 5 and hitting 3 out of 5 balls for 8/10, 8/11 and 8/13 is great.

The data for the lottery can be downloaded at: [url]http://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/files/EuroMillions.csv[/url]. To win you need 5 balls from 1 to 50 and 2 "lucky star" balls from 1 to 9.

I tried the patterns for the draw last week but wasn't too successful. Maybe you guys will do much better.

I noticed a certain pattern which may have the chararistics of what your
referring to. There are number(s) which have all hits less than 6 in the last
5 skips in which the skips added up are <= 30. For example, the # 28 -
has skips 0,2,5,1,4. I noticed very few numbers won with more than 5 or 6
low skips and the skips total <= 30. They seemed to have been
exhausted or appeared beyond their max? This is true for numbers with skips
where one or two skips are greater than 6, but the skips totaled are still
<=30. They reappeared when the skips were greater than 30. I looking
at this further with backtesting as usual.

-BP

ganbatte,

Do the 'Lucky Stars' have to be in the proper order too? And can they be doubled i.e. 99 22 etc or are they just 2 balls from the same set of 9?
These 'extra' numbers are just a popular way the lotto folks found to raise the odds to get higher jackpots. Like 5/50 isn't high enough already.

I did download that file last week when testing my program, it's a little out of date now but only by a couple draws. Those postings for Fantasy 5 are based on WinnaLotto and a bit of tweaking based on last 5 draws and draws 5 to 10 draw frequency. Haven't put any of the pattern stuff to use, is still in the 'testing' phase. I'll probably release a new version of the program I posted that adds skips 1-5 for an <= 30 => indicator to see if it has any bearing on possible combinations. I'll probably make it a threshold setting since a 5/39 game and a 5/50 game would have different numbers (like median skip value x 5 or such).

HalfBee

The lucky Stars balls have to be two balls from the same set of nine eg. 1&3 or 2&8.

The extra numbers definitely make it much harder than a normal lotto.

HalfBee

Most people run analysis for the Lucky Star balls separately as they are drawn from a separate set of balls.

The trouble with EuroMillions is that you definitely need all 5 main balls to even start with a chance for the big bucks.

Yes, but do they have to be in the correct order also?

All the results from all the websites are in increasing order.

The lottery terms say "'Match 5 and 2 Lucky Stars' category:
means that the five numbers selected by a Player from the numbers one to fifty inclusive match, in any order, all the Main Numbers drawn in a Draw and the two numbers selected by a Player from or in the numbers one to nine inclusive only match, in any order, the Lucky Star Numbers drawn in that Draw."

Which to me means that the numbers can be in any order.

I just had a look at the odds (which I never do) and matching the 5 main balls is 1: 3,632,160 and matching the 5 main balls and 2 Lucky Stars is 1: 76,275,360. Those 2 little balls sure increase those odds.

ganbatte,
Thanks, just getting it clear what actually happens in that game for testing purposes. Yeah, lucky stars would have to be figured/tracked separately. Not sure what strategy would be good for stars.

ganbatte,

Check prediction posting on Euromillions. Ignore the ticket stuff that's just a test prediction. The number pool (20 Numbers) is as near to the same way I do my Fantasy 5 picks, with the inclusion of BP's patterns as redundancy check toward the filters/tweaks I normally use. Like I said on that post, it's WAY out of my league but will try it and see what happens. The lucky stars I chose the 4 I felt most likely to show and just semi-wheeled them in a repeat pattern down the list. Not an ideal solution to the stars, but who knows...

I used BPMedian in winnalotto and added column #30 as a filter:

Filter Column:

This eliminated 14 numbers for the 5/50 part of EuroMillions. I did nothing with Lucky Star.
Try this as a start. Do some backtesting and check your results.

-BP

Yeah, my pattern set eliminated 19 leaving 31 numbers. What I found works (or should I say worked in the previous draw groups where I could see the next numbers) was to select the patterns of the current draw numbers and then select all those of the same count value with similar skip sum thresholds.

Example: 65665 (4) - I'd keep all the other patterns with (4) counts that also (part of new program version) had skip values threshold of similar value. Actual listing was 65665 (4) <1>3 so others with <1>3 or <0>4 that hit 4 times would also be marked to save. Patterns that hit 4 to 9 times seem most popular. Since the extreme upper end also should prove useful I select it only if there is 1 of a particular value say 14 and 12 hits (same with lower end).

Eliminating the patterns I didn't want got rid of 12 to 25 balls. I know it can be a lot more accurate on which patterns to keep, but still experimenting. I use the BpMedD filter and that only pulled out 10 numbers (over 50% simple) and another 8 (under 50% simple) which is my usual split point. I try to take half of each depending if they are backed up by other filters. I also add in some that are not part of that group if they show up in mulitple filters.

Hi Halfbee,

Thanks for sharing your program.

I am currently having a problem. I am able to import my results but when I click "Get skip" it shows the following error which I did a printscreen:

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/5319/18195311qq2.jpg

Hope you can help.

Thanks

Thanks for the obscure error messages Microsoft

Yes, it doesn't have a lot of error handling. How much history are you loading? Should be about 200-300 draws if you have them. Does the history show up in the listing? Should have a history list and the next draws below it on the left side. Do they look right, should be DrawID and then the draw number information.

I used 110 draws but I tried duplicating 100 more draws in my results.csv but still showed the same error.

The history showed up correctly with the recent future draws below and the rest at the top and with the draw id and draw numbers.

???

Hi Halfbee, the following was displayed when I click details:

See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.

************** Exception Text **************
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: InvalidArgument=Value of '-1' is not valid for 'index'.
Parameter name: index
at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.ObjectCollection.get_ Item(Int32 index)
at BP_skipper.BPskipMain.SkipCounter()
at BP_skipper.BPskipMain.SkipCountButton_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.OnMouseUp(MouseEventAr gs mevent)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.ButtonBase.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Button.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.O nMessage(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.W ndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)


************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
----------------------------------------
BP_skipper
Assembly Version: 1.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 1.0.0.0
CodeBase: file:///G:/bpskip/BP_skipper.exe
----------------------------------------
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
----------------------------------------
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.1434 (REDBITS.050727-1400)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
----------------------------------------
System.Core
Assembly Version: 3.5.0.0
Win32 Version: 3.5.21022.8 built by: RTM
CodeBase: file:///G:/bpskip/System.Core.DLL
----------------------------------------

************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.

For example:

<configuration>
<system.windows.forms jitDebugging="true" />
</configuration>

When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.