I really appreciate the input from users of my lottery and gambling software. I want to go one step further in my honesty. When I offered my software as freeware, I had one altruistic purpose in mind, and also a selfish goal. It’s all about the unity of two opposites.

The selfish goal in my mind was testing my lotto software. More testers do offer a higher probability to discover bugs in my lottery or gambling software. I acknowledge it, I have always done so: Users of my big lotto software discovered a number of bugs larger than the number of bugs I discovered! In recognition, I offer a lot of my bug-free software as freeware…

When the PCs were painfully slow, it was almost impossible to generate all lotto combinations with all the filters enabled at the tightest settings. I couldn’t do it just a few years ago. But several users of my software came across various bugs in my lottery software based on their interests. They had come up with personal strategies, they tried the strategies, but the winning lottery combination was not generated! Therefore, there must have been a bug or two in my software programs or functions.

They were right, but with a qualification. The testing must be done the right way.

How do we perform a test the right way? I presented this method several times at the main site, including the latest lottery software manual. Search the site on test software. Also, I wrote about testing at the oldest message board (saliu.com/bbs/). I will also make a sticky post so that the testing method is more visible.

You have a lottery results file named MyData. You do the winning reports (or the filters reports in MDIEditor) for MyData. Write down every filter for draw #1. Be absolutely accurate (better still, print the reports on paper)!

Open MyData and delete line (drawing or draw) #1. Draw #1 will be “unknown” now: We place it in the fu ture. Save the file as MyData.2. Run the corresponding lottery combination generator FOR THE MyData.2 FILE — NOT FOR MyData!

Type the lottery filters exactly at the tightest setting. If the report value of the filter showed N, type N as the minimum value. Type N+1 as the maximum value. The maximum value of a lottery filter must be at least ‘the_minimum_value’ + 1. This important fact is mentioned in every tutorial that accompanies my lottery software.

I just ran a test on Pick-3 lottery in MDIEditor And Lotto WE in response to a bug report from a user. Fortunately, the pick-3 module in MDIEditor has a fast ‘sequential’ option that generates all lottery combinations in sequential (lexicographic) order. In this case, Ion1 was 76. In the input form I typed Ion1_min=76 and Ion1_max=77; Ion2_min=12 and Ion2_max=13; Ion3_min=6 and Ion3_max=7; and so on with the rest of the lottery filters — all of them. I disabled the inner filters and the ‘past draws’ filter. The program generated one lottery combination: The winning set (it was 1 8 7 in this real-life case).

The sequential (lexicographical) functions in the lotto modules in MDIEditor And Lotto WE are obviously slower. They deal with millions and millions of combinations. So, if you enable the lotto filters as per above, it may take a long time for the program to find the winning lotto combination. A fast computer will generate acceptably shortly, however. The DOS (command prompt) LotWon software has faster sequential functions in several lotto programs. The programs will look at every combination in the game and generate the winning one — again, after a while. There are millions of combinations in a lotto game. Every combination is checked hundreds of times, even thousands of times, against a set of parameters (lotto filters). The generating process can’t be instantaneous!

There is one caveat. Some lotto filters take huge values. You’ll notice them in the winning reports. DO NOT ENABLE THE MAXIMUM VALUE FOR SUCH FILTERS! The main candidates are ION5, FivR, FivS — possibly others as well. Refer to the tutorial for MDIEditor And Lotto WE.

Please be sure to do your test according to these guidelines. If you report a lottery bug or two, I’ll look at it. If you don’t get a response, it means the bug was not real.

Ion Saliu,
Bug Exterminator At-Large

Sandal168 wrote:

Posted: Sep 12, 2007 23:31 Post subject: Re: Testing Ion Saliu’s Lottery/Lotto Software Correctly

I think I might have found a variation from your method to test the integrity of MDIE.

1. Report the filters for the current draw with last winning combination.

2. Remove the last winning combination from the data. Save the data.

3. Use the filter values reported for Any and Ver values. Not setting the Ion Filters will also give the correct result.

4. If for example the following Any Filter values are 1 2 5 9 20 23 - just add 1 to the original values and use it for maximum values - once you get the max values - minus 2 from it and use the new values for min values on the input form. So it will look like these:
Min 0 1 4 8 19 22
Max 2 3 6 10 21 24

The point is there should be 2 intervals between each filter.

5. Apply #4 method to the Ver Filter values in the input form - 2 intervals from the original lottery filter reported.

I am not a programmer, just a patient tester of the MDIE program. I use 600,000 for SIM lotto-6 file. Hope this finding contributes to the further testing of the MDIEditor And Lotto WE. Personally, I like this lotto program, looks simple but it is very powerful.