🎰 Lottery Analysis & Simulation Tool

A command-line Python tool for analysing historical lottery draw data and simulating drawings against your own number picks — with memory-efficient incremental statistics, live API data, and save/resume support.

Supports Mega Millions, Powerball, and any custom lottery configuration.

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Features

• Historical analysis — fetches real draw history from the NY Open Data API and caches it locally; displays hot/cold numbers, positional frequencies, and theoretical prize odds
• Live simulation — runs continuous random drawings at any speed, printing output only on noteworthy matches (≥2 white balls or the bonus ball)
• Multiple picks — simulate several ticket picks simultaneously against every draw
• Prize tier tracking — counts how many times each prize tier is hit across the whole session
• Memory-efficient — accumulates frequency counters incrementally; RAM usage stays flat regardless of how many draws are simulated
• Save & resume — save state mid-simulation with s, reload with r, or clean up saves from the prompt
• Cross-platform — Linux, macOS, and Windows; Unix-only terminal features are guarded appropriately
• Graceful degradation — falls back to built-in reference statistics if the API is unavailable; preserves partial fetches on network errors

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Requirements

• Python 3.8 or later
• requests library

pip install requests

No other third-party dependencies.

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Quick Start

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/your-username/safeTcheck-android.git
cd lottery-analysis-sim

# Install the one dependency
pip install requests

# Run
python3 lotto_simulator_20260405e.py

On Windows:

python lotto_simulator_20260405e.py

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Usage

Step 1 — Select a lottery

Select lottery:
  (1) Mega Millions
  (2) Powerball
  (3) Custom lottery
Choice (1/2/3):

Choosing (3) prompts for pool sizes and draw counts, letting you model any numeric lottery format.

Step 2 — Choose an action

Option	Description
1	Historical analysis (Mega Millions / Powerball)
2	Run a simulation
3	Force-refresh historical data from the API

Entering picks (simulation mode)

  'u' user pick, 'q' quick pick, 'd' done/start:

Enter as many picks as you like before starting. Any unrecognised input prints a prompt reminder rather than silently falling through.

Simulation keyboard controls

Key	Action
q	Stop
s	Save state and continue
r	Reload a saved state and resume

Speed

Enter delay between draws in seconds (0 = fastest, default 0.015):

At delay=0 the simulation runs at full CPU speed — millions of draws per minute — with no memory growth.

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Output

The simulation prints a line only when a pick achieves a result worth noting:

Draw 84213: White [7, 21, 28, 42, 66], Red 5
Pick 1: 3 white, 0 red (Prize: $10)

Draw 201847: White [3, 14, 28, 42, 66], Red 11
Pick 1: 4 white, 1 red (Prize: $200)

At the end of a session a full statistical report is printed — most common balls by position, hot/cold numbers, theoretical odds, and a tier hit summary:

Tier Hit Counts in Simulation:
  5+1 (Grand Prize): 0 times
  4+1 ($10,000): 1 times
  3+1 ($200): 12 times
  3+0 ($10): 47 times
  2+1 ($10): 89 times
  1+1 ($4): 312 times
  0+1 ($2): 401 times

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Save Files

State is saved as timestamped JSON files (lotto_sim_save_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.json) in the working directory. They store counters rather than raw draw lists, so they stay small (a few KB) regardless of session length.

Old-format saves from earlier versions (which stored raw draw lists) are automatically detected and migrated on load.

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Data & Cache

Historical draw data is cached in lottery_cache/ after the first fetch:

lottery_cache/
  mega_millions_historical.json
  powerball_historical.json

Data source: NY Open Data — Lottery

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File Structure

.
├── lotto_simulator_20260405e.py   # Main script (v22)
├── lottery_cache/                 # Auto-created; holds cached API data
│   ├── mega_millions_historical.json
│   └── powerball_historical.json
├── lotto_sim_save_*.json          # Save files created during simulation
└── README.md

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Prize Tiers

Mega Millions

Match	Prize
5 white + Mega Ball	Jackpot
5 white	$1,000,000
4 white + Mega Ball	$10,000
4 white	$500
3 white + Mega Ball	$200
3 white	$10
2 white + Mega Ball	$10
1 white + Mega Ball	$4
Mega Ball only	$2

Powerball

Match	Prize
5 white + Powerball	Jackpot
5 white	$1,000,000
4 white + Powerball	$50,000
4 white	$100
3 white + Powerball	$100
3 white	$7
2 white + Powerball	$7
1 white + Powerball	$4
Powerball only	$4

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Notes

• This tool is for entertainment and analysis purposes only. Past draw frequencies do not influence future results — all lottery draws are statistically independent.
• Historical data availability depends on the NY Open Data API. The tool falls back to built-in reference statistics if the API is unreachable.
• The simulation uses Python's random.sample seeded from the OS entropy source — it is not cryptographically secure, but is statistically appropriate for this purpose.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.