The history of lotto
The predecessor of lotto in it’s current form is found in Renaissance Italy, where people were placing bets as to who would win the magistrate elections, on what day the pope would die, when the new air would be born etcetera. As a game of chance, being displayed systematically,
lotto appeared in Genua in the year of 1620 when member of the Great Council of Genua, Benedetto Gentile decided to systematically arrange the interest of civilians to place bets. In those days, every year 5 civilians would be chosen as a member of the Great Counsil, and from this number a total of 90 candidates. The people would try to predict the outcome of the elections and would place a money bet on their favorite candidate.
Benedetto Gentile took advantage of this interest, organized the game and took it to other countries under the name of “Genuese Lotto” Invented in Genua, this game of chance spread quickly through then Europe. In this day and age we can say that the Lotto, despite it’s many forms, is still a game of chance, played by many enthusiasts.
The history of games of chance is presumably as old as our civilization. People have always placed bets on the outcome of gladiator fights, horse racing, dog racing, elections outcome and many other events. Chance game enthusiasts have often been a source of inspiration for artists and scientists. Suffice it to say that an important part of math, the so called probability calculation, has games of chance to thank for its origin.
The principle of this passion lies, in popular opinion, in the fact that people have a intrinsic need to show others that they are in fact smarter by predicting the correct outcome.
The game of Lotto is without doubt the most popular game of chance in the world. One of the reasons is the complete objectivity of the game, it’s outcome relies solely on chance. Not on (false) near-sightedness of the referee nor the goalies stomachache.
The player is confronted with coincidence in it’s purest form. And yet the player is capable of making combinations, collecting statistics of previous drawings and deciding on groups that seemed to have more “luck”. When he chooses a group of numbers, the player has need for a system. Without a system, the player could be without success even though he guessed a group of 6 numbers, because he oversaw a combination. Another reason could be that he enlisted to many combinations.
From a mathematic point of view the problem of making a system with given characteristics isn’t a difficult combinatory assignment, but getting to it’s solution will take a lot of time, even with a computer. It’s obvious that you need a fair amount of mathematical knowledge to successfully combine a system.
