First Steps
If you are first-time Expert Lotto user, please read through this page. It provides some useful tips and hints that might save you a lot of time when working with the application.
If you are upgrading from Expert Lotto 4.x, you should read this topic in application's documentation. The user interface has changed significantly in Expert Lotto 5 and also some functions has been renamed.
Setup New Lottery
If you've just installed and started Expert Lotto you can see that most toolbar and menu items are disabled. Only the Start page window is showing where you can see the latest headlines from our discussion forum. Expert Lotto installer does not copy any lottery to your hard disk during the installation so you have to setup a new lottery to start using all Expert Lotto features.
Click menu File - New - Lottery to start New Lottery wizard where you will be offered a list of lotteries shipped with Expert Lotto. Pick from the list the lottery you wish to play with Expert Lotto and click button Next. Then you will be prompted to select a folder where the new lottery will be saved to and click Yes button to open that lottery in Expert Lotto. Note that most of toolbar buttons and menu items are enabled now.
If the lottery you wish to play is not in the list, you need to define the lottery parameters yourself. In wizard window choose option Create other lottery and click button Next. You will be asked a series of question to setup the lottery rules - the size of number pool, draw schedule, winning combinations etc.
You need to perform these steps only once. If you quit Expert Lotto and start the application again, the last used lottery will open automatically. If you need to switch to a different lottery on your disk, use menu File - Open Lottery.
Update Winning Numbers
You've just created a new lottery so now you should bring its database of past winning numbers up to date. For selected lotteries Expert Lotto provides an easy online update option to download past winning numbers directly from lottery web site. Click menu Winning Numbers - Online Update to see the list of lotteries this option is available for.
If your lottery isn't listed, you have to use menu Winning Numbers - Import to import past winning numbers. Lottery operators usually publish past results on their web sites. So you can copy the text listing past numbers from lottery web page and use the Import wizard to update your winning numbers database.
If only a few draws are missing in your lottery winning numbers database, you can use menu Winning Numbers - Add to type the missing numbers manually from keyboard. Use this function regularly to keep your winning numbers up to date.
Look Around
Now Expert Lotto is ready for your lottery so start experimenting with the application. Try clicking menu items to see what they do and what kind of windows they open. You don't have to be afraid of breaking or accidentally deleting anything. You can always setup the lottery again to a different folder and start from scratch.
For example, use menu Winning Numbers - Show As to display the content of your winning numbers database in various ways - table, matrix, statistics or charts.
You can rearrange the window layout to your liking - simply drag any window's header and drop it to a new location. Also adjust window size by dragging the dividers between them. If you want to return the default window layout, use menu Windows - Reset Windows.
Analyze
When you are ready for some serious work with Expert Lotto start with the statistical analysis of past winning numbers. Click menu Winning Numbers - Analyze to open Tickets Analyzer wizard. Click button Select to select which part of your winning numbers database should be analyzed and click button Next. The next step lists all statistical analyzers currently available in Expert Lotto. Tick all of them and click button Finish.
A new window opens displaying the results of statistical analysis. Use Show combo box at the top of this window to display a different statistical table. Use buttons at the top of this window to switch between table and chart display.
Wheels
In statistical analysis above you can see which numbers are the most frequent and which numbers are the least frequent in your lottery. Now you might want to put some of those numbers into a wheel and bet on them in the next draw. The distribution of Expert Lotto does not include any optimized wheels. You can get some very good wheels on internet though.
If you have downloaded a wheel from internet, click menu Package - Insert - Ticket File to load the wheel to Expert Lotto. Make sure to select Text Files in File Format combo box when browsing for the downloaded wheel file. Then click menu Package - Show As - Table to display the combinations in the wheel. Click menu Package - Swap Numbers to put your own numbers into the wheel.
Or you can create full list of all possible combinations - menu Package - Insert - Full Wheel - and then filter it down to a reasonably small set of combinations, see below.
Filters
To use Expert Lotto filters, first load some number combinations into the Package - random numbers, wheel from internet or full list of all possible combinations - and then use menu Package - Reduce to pick a filter.
In most cases the filter window has OK, Apply and Preview buttons. Hitting OK button applies the filter condition on selected combinations and closes the filter window. You can track the filtering process at the bottom right corner of the main window where a progress bar is showing how many combinations have been filtered so far. Button Apply executes the filter as well but leaves the filter window opened. You can adjust filter parameters and run the filter again. Button Preview just counts how many combinations the filter condition accepts and how many combinations are rejected by the filter.
History
With History features you can find the Jackpot winning numbers with 100% guarantee. You can see an example here and the details how the functions work are available in application's documentation.
The starting point in Expert Lotto is Latest History window which opens from menu History - Latest and Summary History window which opens from menu History - Summary. There is also My Estimates window which keeps track of your estimates for the next draw that are needed to find the Jackpot winning combination.
Please do read the documentation first to make sure you understand how the History functions work.
Advanced
Now it's time to try some of the more sophisticated features. Besides the History features you should look for example at Complex Filter which offers almost limitless filtering possibilities. You can build a deep hierarchy where individual filters are bound with various logical operators. Click menu File - New - Complex Filter to create a new Complex Filter.
Another example is Custom Analyzer where you can analyze how often your favorite filters hit or what is the average/min/max interval between two consecutive hits. Click menu File - New - Custom Analyzer to create a new Custom Analyzer window.
Configuration
Use menu Tools - Options to configure the application. On Mac use application Preferences instead. You can customize for example keyboard shortcuts for some frequently used commands, change default colors in chart windows and modify a lot of other settings.
Application Updates
Expert Lotto is under constant development and new features are being added very frequently. By default the application is configured to check for new application updates every week. You can also check manually using menu Help - Check for updates. There's a message in the bottom right corner of the main application window when new application update is available on Expert Lotto server. Click the notification and Expert Lotto will automatically download and install the updates to ensure that you are using the latest version of Expert Lotto.
