NAME Game::Lottery VERSION version 1.03 DESCRIPTION Pick and check numbers for popular Lottery Draw Games using a Cryptographically Secure randomizer. General Draw Games and Big Draw Games are supported, but ticket valuation functions are only available for PowerBall and MegaMillions. SYNOPSIS Use the bundled lottery-big-draw.pl script to pick your numbers: lottery-big-draw.pl -h To use in your code: use Game::Lottery; my $lottery = Game::Lottery->new( game => 'PowerBall'); DRAW GAMES Lottery Draw games have a pool of balls. Players bet on as many numbers as the number of balls that will be drawn. BIG DRAW LOTTERY GAMES Have a pool of balls (white) players must match, and a second pool (red) from which (usually) a single ball is drawn, many of the prizes require matching the red ball. The odds of winning the big prize in the two main games in the United States: PowerBall and MegaMillions, are about 300 Million to 1. When the prize isn't won, the jackpot increases. The JackPots frequently get quite large. When the JackPots get large enough, the expected value of a ticket exceeds the cost. The smaller prizes in both US games return less than 20% of the ticket value. There are several options to increase bet sizes, both major games have a multiplier ball option; these are not currently supported. California has a different payout on non-jackpot prizes. For California and any other jurisdictions not using the standard payout table, the expected value generated by this software does not apply. METHODS new Required parameter: game Games currently supported are PowerBall, MegaMillions, Draw (1 ball pool) and CustomBigDraw(custom 2 ball pools). Game names may be abbreviated as mega, power, draw and custom. my $game = Game::Lottery->new( game => 'PowerBall'); my $game = Game::Lottery->new( game => 'power'); Game Returns the Game. say $game->Game(); BasicDraw Returns an Array Reference of balls picked. Applicable to a large number of Draw games. my $drawn = $game->BasicDraw( $BallLastNum, $BallsDrawn ); BigDraw Draws White and Red Balls for Big Draw Games. Returns a Hash Reference. my $drawn = $game->BigDraw(); { game => $game, whiteballs => ArrayRef, redballs => ArrayRef } CustomBigDrawSetup For CustomBigDraw games, the pool ranges and number of balls to draw must be set before using the BigDraw method. For the directly supported Big Draw Games this is done at new. The game name is set to CustomBigDraw $game->CustomBigDrawSetup( game => 'Some other big draw game', # optionally set a custom game name. white => 99, whitecount => 1, red => 20, redcount => 5 ); TicketValue Returns the expected value of a ticket given a JackPot. The Cash Value should be used, not the advertised annuity value. The value passed may be either in dollars or millions of dollars. If no value (or 0) is based the result will be the return of all other prizes than the jackpot. my $TicketValue = $game->TicketValue( 600 ); my $BaseTicketValue = $game->TicketValue( 0 ); TicketJackPotValue Returns just value of the JackPot divided by the number of possible combinations. my $JackPot = $game->TicketJackPotValue( 600 ); SavePicks Save an arrayref of picks from BasicDraw or BigDraw to a file. $game->SavePicks( $file, $picks ); ReadPicks Read saved picks from a file, returns an array. my @picks = $game->ReadPicks( $file ); Checking Tickets CheckPicks say join "\n", $game->CheckPicks( $winnersfile, $ticketsfile ); The Saved Tickets File Format This library pads single digit numbers with a leading 0. It uses [] to differentiate red balls. The balls are checked as strings so 01 and 1 are not matching numbers just as 02 and [02] are not. The entries are simply the numbers on a line, separated by spaces, with the red balls in [brackets]. A file generated by SavePicks looks like this: 05 40 50 57 60 [15] 02 33 36 44 68 [19] The format allows for a memo at the beginning of a line, separated from the data by a double colon ::. When included in a winners file, the memo is included in the output. Usually the memo is the date of the draw, but it can be any string. Lines beginning with # are considered comments and not read. Winners files need to be created by hand. # example winners file 2023-09-16:: 22 30 37 44 45 [18] # the memo is just a string, it doesn't have to be the date Wednesday 2023-10-11::22 24 40 52 64 [10] # the memo isn't required but is helpful when you have # multiple lines in your winners file. 16 34 46 57 59 [23] SEE ALSO You can allow the Lottery to pick numbers for you, which will save you from having to put numbers you picked onto the slips for the lottery machines. If you search the web and the mobile app stores, you'll find plenty of sites and apps that do similar things to this module. AUTHOR John Karr BRAINBUZ CONTRIBUTORS BUGS Please report any bugs or feature requests through the web interface at . I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes. TODO The most interesting thing todo would be to use an API to get winning ticket data. There are several providers that require registering for a key. The author would prefer to use a keyless api, preferably provided by the major games or one of the state lotteries. The major games do not provide such an API. LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT Copyright 2023 John Karr. This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see .