Changing the balls

Talk about anything related to lotteries... This is your place to chat!
Post Reply
Sooz
Proficient
Proficient
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:24 am
Location: Canada

Changing the balls

Post by Sooz » Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:09 am

Does anyone have any information about when or how often the balls are changed in various lotteries. It might be quite helpful to know that. Maybe GAT wouldn't work as well for the next few draws after the balls are changed. So, if we're on a budget we might want to save our money for a few draws.
Some people save up their money until the jackpot is large, but I've never heard of anyone saving their money after the balls are changed. :-)
I couldn't find any information for Ontario games. Lots of stuff about the great care they take to make the balls equal but nothing about when (or if) the balls are changed. Maybe they're NOT changed. If not, then it seems to me that the balls would become less and less uniform just from bouncing around each other - so GAT would have better success with an older game.
Sooz

trevg
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Dec 22, 2013 11:11 am

Re: Changing the balls

Post by trevg » Thu Dec 04, 2014 11:47 am

I don't know about Canadian Lotto but in Australia i found they rotate both balls and machines e.g see this discussion:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.gam ... GJE1CyFHMJ

Even though GAT engine gave better than probability results, i kind of gave up playing Lotto after reading this. If i could be bothered to try and track ball/machine combinations and use only 1 ball/machine set of results in GAT engine, i'm sure i could have got even better results.

Sooz
Proficient
Proficient
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:24 am
Location: Canada

Re: Changing the balls

Post by Sooz » Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:55 pm

Well Trevg, your response motivated me to call the OLG information number. I felt silly but hey, the worst they could do to me was say they don't give out that information, right? The guy I spoke to was actually quite helpful. He said the last time the balls were changed in the machine which they use for Lottario was in June of 2011. He could not tell me the next time though - he said "That information comes from a higher source than I have access to".

So I'm quite encouraged, because it's been 3 1/2 years! That's plenty of draws for GAT to analyze.

He explained that changing the balls is a complicated procedure - and that's why they don't do it very often and don't need to do it very often. He said it's not just a matter of throwing the old ones out and throwing some new ones in. He said that the balls need to be analyzed and checked.
He said that, once the balls are in the machine, they're sealed in there somehow. So I just watched the recent draw online and it's true, the picked balls slide down a transparent tunnel but are still inside the machine. Here's the site to watch in case anyone's interested http://www.olg.ca/lotteries/draws.jsp

I guess there's quite a difference in how accessible the balls are depending on which type of machine they use. If in Australia they change a few balls at a time, it sounds like those balls are more easily accessible to change or replace. But wait - I just read your link more carefully. It seems they rotate the barrels but not the actual balls.

Well, we don't have to second-guess whether GAT can handle this. Just look at the improvement ratio.
Sooz

Sooz
Proficient
Proficient
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed Feb 09, 2011 12:24 am
Location: Canada

Re: Changing the balls

Post by Sooz » Sat Dec 06, 2014 11:21 pm

On further googling i read that the balls are stored in a safe between games. So this means that they don't remain inside the machine but are reloaded for every game. So now i'm confused. The videos start with the balls already jumping around. It doesn't show how the balls are loaded into the machine.
So all we know for sure is that the balls are not changed very often.
Sooz

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests