How to create a new gamble

With LSMC, your actual lottery entries for your syndicate are called gambles.

To create a gamble you need to have a syndicate, and the members of that syndicate must be in credit sufficiently to play at least one ticket for the game you are trying to play. In this example we shall be using the syndicate created in the syndicate creation example. At the end of that example we had eight members, each with a credit of £20.

For the game menu items and buttons to become active (if relevant) you must first select the game in the main window. You may then select the game play button or the "Game|Play..." menu item. Alternatively you may right click the game in the main window and select play from the drop down menu. The fastest method however is to double click the game!

We have selected the Lotto game. For each game you are given the option of selecting the members who will play in the new gamble. Normally you play with all (active) members. You may select from your (active) members though if you need to. This can happen if some of your members want to have extra entries, or if some of your members have not paid in their subs payments. Some of your members may be flagged as suspended or as leaving, and they will not be listed as valid players.

Above we see that all members (the default) are selected to play. The minimum sum for the game is the price of a ticket. The maximum equal share amount is the amount you may play with the selected members such that all members have an equal stake. All gambles are created this way (ie all players have an equal share in the gamble), and the amount can be lower than expected if some selected players have lower credit amounts.

The maximum equal amount is the maximum you can play per member with the particular members selected. As all members have £20, that is the amount we see

If you wish you may select a selection of your active members as below.

Having selected the Selected members option we must then select the members to play. You may use the Shift button (with the mouse) to select a block of players or the CTRL button to pick out particular members. Here we have selected three players, and the value to note is the maximum amount we can play is now £60 and not £160 as before.

Clicking "Next >>" (we selected all members) then takes you to the stage where you create the details of your new Lotto (in this case) gamble.

Everything you need to detail the gamble can be done here. The first way you may want to enter your lottery lines is to enter them manually. (You would do this if your members pick the lines for example). Here we see the worst lottery line you can play being entered.

You enter the numbers and then select add line. The line will then be added to the list of lines for the gamble on the left hand side.

You can also ask LSMC to randomly generate lines in the edit boxes. If you like the line generated you can add it to the entry's list. That is what we've done in the following image. We have also selected the filters option and then the "Filters..." button to see what filters are switched on.

Filters give you the option of failing lines if they fail various filter checks. If active when you create random lines, your lines will have passed these filter. If you turn the filters on after you have entered lines, you can check your lines against the filters, and in this case the numbers pattern would fail the line 1,2,3,4,5,6. LSMC will only remove this line if you confirm it should do so.

You do not need to worry about filters if you wish, so switch them off. If you use them you may want to only select a few of the options.

A quicker way to produce lots of random lines is to use the "Generate and Add" option. You can type in the number of lines you want and add them to your gamble's lines. If filters are on, the new lines will pass those filters.

Here we have added eight more lines to the previous two. Do note that LSMC has it's own carefully designed random number generator, so you can be assured of truly random numbers.

Up to this stage the OK button has been disabled. This is partly because the application does not know what days you wish to play, or how many weeks, although it defaults to one. Entering these details will now enable the OK button, but only if the maximum amount you may gamble is enough to cover the amount the described gamble would cost.

The above image shows ten lines on the left, that are played twice per week, for eight weeks. This is a total of one hundred and sixty plays, and is the most we may play.

If we add a further line, this increases the cost of the gamble to £176, which is more than the funds we have available. In this case the OK button is disabled.

To enable the OK button again, we must alter the details of the gamble such that the cost comes down. We can change the days played, alter the number of weeks played, or in this case remove a line.

You may select single lines, blocks of lines (with the Shift button), or pick out lines (using the CTRL button). Once selected you remove the lines. Here we are removing one line.

Now the line is removed we can give the gamble a name. The default name is the game name and the date, but you can give the gamble a more descriptive name.

Here you see the gamble has been created. Note that the members' credit values have been altered, and that the gamble panel has a lottery machine icon. This is telling you that you have not confirmed the purchase of the gamble.

You must confirm the purchase of the gamble for the manager to compare the gamble with any draw results. You may select the gamble in the main window to enable the gamble menu items and buttons, then select the "Gamble|Purchase" menu item or the purchase confirm button. Here We've right clicked the gamble and are selecting the purchase menu item on the drop down menu.

To confirm the purchase of the gamble you need to enter a date and time. You are limited to any time on the day of gamble creation in the manager, and the current date and time. The manager needs to know when you purchased the entry at the retailers, as it is possible that a draw has passed from gamble creation to actual purchase, and the manager needs to know what draws the entry is actually playing, and to be compared against. You should also ideally create any gambles in the manager before you purchase them.

Here we can see that we created the gamble at 13:10 on Monday. We are confirming that we purchased the actual tickets at 14:05 on the same day. We have confirmation of the first draw from the confirmed purchase time. This gives us eight weeks of two draws per week, starting on Wednesday. If we purchased the tickets on Thursday, our draws would start on the following Saturday. In this case, LSMC would check with you that that is correct and as you expected.