interesting, but a ~300k drawdown would rule a lot of people out. Also, kinda suss he won't tell us his payoff......I suspect the result deviated a lot from his modeling which indicates there's a flaw in the assumptions somewhere.
Yeah, not including the payoff, or even saying if he broke even at all, is what breaks this whole thing. There is no result presented, and it sucks because of it.
putting the traded result back into the backtest and analyzing the output is more important than simply being up. How do we know if his model didn't work at all and he was just lucky?
Or because he doesn't want his activities to be classified as professional income and so mentioning the total would be foolish were it to attract the ATO's attention?
Football (soccer) is a low scoring game meaning a finite number of results are more probable. In this instance (0:0, 1:0, 0:1, 1:1).
In a game which includes a rule:
>3. If results were identical, the match with a higher match number was selected. For example, if two matches were 2–2 draws, match #32 > match #5
this *drastically* skews the winning numbers, sufficient to give a well crafted and well funded player a probable positive outcome in the long run.
The lotto numbers were picked based on the results of upcoming football matches. With knowledge of the rules and the matches involved, some lotto selections will be more likely than others. The most likely selections will have an expected return higher than the cost, so make money.
Other people have explained the statistical shenanigans, but there was another thing I found interesting.
To get odds of 10% to win you had to buy a "System 20" ticket which cost $21,000.
The author was in the hole by $300,000 before he even won a game, and kept playing for six years. He won't say how much money he won, but I assume he is quite wealthy.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/0*qbJ9CiX2flVu2ugD.jpg
This is really all I got from it. Its a picture at the end of the article.
Also, Pools was more a game of skill and knowledge of the game and soccer then luck.
Ah The Pools, my old friend.
I was a kid who watched 21 as well, read up on the MIT team and wanted to get in on the action as well but I wasn't mathematically minded enough to count cards. I stumbled across The Pools pretty soon after that.
The headline really made me raise my eyebrows but reading through the article and it's not that different to what a bunch of us were trying to do. The ability to shift the odds was the main differentiator between The Pools and all the other lottery games. I would be genuinely surprised if people were picking numbers at random.
I gave it two good cracks, separated by a period of 8 or so years. Both times were usually around February, it was pretty well into the northern hemisphere football season and generally you'd have good form lines to base your selections on. I didn't get as far as ranking draws by the match number as per this guy, and I really don't know how much more of an edge that would give you. But I had spreadsheets and I gave weighting to different variables and I used Betfair odds and I thought I was the next Zeljko.
The game was beatable under certain conditions, I just didn't have the time or the money to put into it. There'd be no way I was buying a Systems 20 under any circumstances, so to see that he was \~300k down is a lot of losing tickets. But if he made money out of it, then the best of luck to him.
The Pools died because of competition, not because this guy was making money, if he was making money. IMO.
The system was flawed, mathematically. It wasn't about an assured win, it was about choosing numbers that were more likely than random, to win.
ISTR there was an Irish lotto scam that worked the same way - if they could get LOTS of people to play specific numbers, the maths said they would probably win, and then could split it - everyone wins a fiver
[yes, 1992](https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/how-a-secret-syndicate-managed-to-buy-the-lotto-35981173.html)
> Ever wondered why The Pools lottery was "retired" in 2018? No.
interesting, but a ~300k drawdown would rule a lot of people out. Also, kinda suss he won't tell us his payoff......I suspect the result deviated a lot from his modeling which indicates there's a flaw in the assumptions somewhere.
Yeah, not including the payoff, or even saying if he broke even at all, is what breaks this whole thing. There is no result presented, and it sucks because of it.
Would we believe him even if he revealed how much he won? His reasoning (for those who can follow it) is what is interesting.
putting the traded result back into the backtest and analyzing the output is more important than simply being up. How do we know if his model didn't work at all and he was just lucky?
Well he doesn’t even state he won anything? Let alone won enough to cover costs
That would lead us to "results bias".
Or because he doesn't want his activities to be classified as professional income and so mentioning the total would be foolish were it to attract the ATO's attention?
TLDR: Wasn't completely random. Guy used some models from smarter people than him, ran simulations and picked numbers accordingly.
TLDR?
Football (soccer) is a low scoring game meaning a finite number of results are more probable. In this instance (0:0, 1:0, 0:1, 1:1). In a game which includes a rule: >3. If results were identical, the match with a higher match number was selected. For example, if two matches were 2–2 draws, match #32 > match #5 this *drastically* skews the winning numbers, sufficient to give a well crafted and well funded player a probable positive outcome in the long run.
The lotto numbers were picked based on the results of upcoming football matches. With knowledge of the rules and the matches involved, some lotto selections will be more likely than others. The most likely selections will have an expected return higher than the cost, so make money.
Other people have explained the statistical shenanigans, but there was another thing I found interesting. To get odds of 10% to win you had to buy a "System 20" ticket which cost $21,000. The author was in the hole by $300,000 before he even won a game, and kept playing for six years. He won't say how much money he won, but I assume he is quite wealthy.
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/0*qbJ9CiX2flVu2ugD.jpg This is really all I got from it. Its a picture at the end of the article. Also, Pools was more a game of skill and knowledge of the game and soccer then luck.
Ah The Pools, my old friend. I was a kid who watched 21 as well, read up on the MIT team and wanted to get in on the action as well but I wasn't mathematically minded enough to count cards. I stumbled across The Pools pretty soon after that. The headline really made me raise my eyebrows but reading through the article and it's not that different to what a bunch of us were trying to do. The ability to shift the odds was the main differentiator between The Pools and all the other lottery games. I would be genuinely surprised if people were picking numbers at random. I gave it two good cracks, separated by a period of 8 or so years. Both times were usually around February, it was pretty well into the northern hemisphere football season and generally you'd have good form lines to base your selections on. I didn't get as far as ranking draws by the match number as per this guy, and I really don't know how much more of an edge that would give you. But I had spreadsheets and I gave weighting to different variables and I used Betfair odds and I thought I was the next Zeljko. The game was beatable under certain conditions, I just didn't have the time or the money to put into it. There'd be no way I was buying a Systems 20 under any circumstances, so to see that he was \~300k down is a lot of losing tickets. But if he made money out of it, then the best of luck to him. The Pools died because of competition, not because this guy was making money, if he was making money. IMO.
Too lazy to read, anyone with "save you a click"?
The system was flawed, mathematically. It wasn't about an assured win, it was about choosing numbers that were more likely than random, to win. ISTR there was an Irish lotto scam that worked the same way - if they could get LOTS of people to play specific numbers, the maths said they would probably win, and then could split it - everyone wins a fiver [yes, 1992](https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/how-a-secret-syndicate-managed-to-buy-the-lotto-35981173.html)