Luck, Psi and Lotteries – Part II

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

c. Visionary Living, Inc.

Get out the pom-poms! Earlier, Fate readers to take part in an international psychic lottery project, in which participants try their precognitive skills to identify the winning numbers in the British National Lottery, one of the largest lotteries in the world. Congratulations, Fate readers! Those of you who took up the challenge have performed exceptionally well. If you haven’t played, you can still join in. There’s no cost to you – and you may win some money. Plus, you will make a contribution to psychical research.

The lottery project, organized by Mick O’Neill, a member of the Society for Psychical Research in London, works like this: Anyone can participate. There are two draws a week, on Wednesday and Saturday. Prior to a draw, participants visualize as many numbers as they can, which they report to O’Neill. His computer figures out the numbers to buy, and these numbers are sent out to participants via email. Every week O’Neill buys about $200 worth of tickets for jackpots of up to $77 million. The cost of the tickets comes from a kitty O’Neill maintains. Players pay nothing for the tickets, but if their numbers are picked, they share in the winnings.

Fate readers have had several months to play, and I asked Mick for an update on their performance. Here is our co-authored report:

Proof of winning streaks?

Most gamblers believe in winning streaks, but previously there has been little scientific evidence that they really exist in games of chance like lotteries. Recently, one of our players (not from Fate) got four winning numbers three times in just 13 attempts, producing personal winnings of $540 from just $24 spent. The odds are 1000 to 1 to get four numbers just once, so the odds of one person making 13 attempts and doing so well are 3 million to one.

After four years, it is possible, though unlikely, that one such good run could have come by chance alone. However, a computer search turned up another player who had an even better run. They had got four winning numbers twice and another three winners three times in just 10 attempts. To have two such winning streaks in the project so far is highly significant.

If such winning streaks continue, then it will confirm that it is possible to psychically predict winning lottery numbers. A key question is why such wins come in quick succession. It could simply be that a first win improves our belief in ourselves and that very belief produces more wins. Alternatively, it could be that we have certain periods in our lives in which our psychic abilities are heightened. This could happen for numerous possible reasons, among them weather cycles, personal biorhythms or astrology. The latter two are extremely interesting, as they are predictable and would give gamblers the answer to an even more crucial question: when to gamble.

Star time or galactic center effect?

We reported earlier of a curious finding made public in 1997 by physicist James Spottiswoode that a certain time of the star day seems to produce better psi results. (See “Luck, Psi and Lotteries – Part I”). Star time is technically called local sidereal time (LST) and the peak occurs at around 13:30hr LST, a time when the constellation Libra is overhead. Mick therefore refers to this time as Libra-time for simplicity.

Spottiswoode found in a total of 2,583 ESP trials in the U.S. and Europe that results were significantly increased when trials were performed within one hour of 13:30 LST. There has never been a satisfactory explanation as to why this effect exists.

The constellation Libra may not actually be the only factor in the effect. In the U.S. and Europe when Libra is overhead, Sagittarius is usually rising at the eastern horizon. Which particular point in Sagittarius varies with latitude? Mick analyzed all the data that Spottiswoode used, considering the latitude and found that the average rising point was 27 Sagittarius. This is within one degree of our galactic center. Could the apparent Libra overhead effect actually be a galactic center rising effect, a far more eminent astronomical event? Are we more psychic when we are aligned with the center of our galaxy?

f the Libra-time effect replicates in the northern hemisphere, then a test to differentiate between the two explanations would best be done in the southern hemisphere, where the galactic center rising coincides with the sign Virgo overhead.

Whatever the reasons for the Libra-time effect, the Spottiswoode findings suggest that if you attempt to use your psi ability during peak Libra-times, you are likely to have greater accuracy and a better hit rate. Translated to the lottery, you are more likely – theoretically – to predict the winning numbers.

LST is _not_ the same as clock time. The Libra-time can occur any time of the day or night.

The table reveals that before May the Libra-time was in the middle of the night. Therefore May was the first reasonable opportunity for Fate readers to test the Libra-time effect. From then through mid-July, the Libra-time top numbers averaged 11 percent more winners than the numbers generated by people who visualized numbers at other times. This analysis includes almost 10,000 numbers. The odds of this 11 percent difference by random chance is 1 in 40. “Statistical significance” requires odds of only one in 20. So, these results are “statistically significant,” but not yet sufficient to claim that we have definite repeatable proof that the stars influence psychic abilities.

The money snowball

One idea of the lottery project is to combine relatively small percentage excesses of winners from each participant to produce larger percentage excesses in the winnings. For example, the 11% excess in Libra-time winners has produced a 60 percent excess in Libra-time winning tickets. Mathematical theory shows that such percentage increases are to be expected.

The objective here is what Mick calls the “money snowball point”: that elusive aim of all gamblers to have such an advantage that for every dollar they bet they consistently get back more than one dollar. For the psychic lottery project, the money snowball point required to produce an ever-growing kitty based on amassing small wins is roughly 200 percent more wins than chance. This seems difficult, but computer simulations show that an excess in successful predictions of only 7 percent by a hundred contributors would result in achieving the “money snowball point.”

Perhaps that money snowball point will happen if enough players time their psychic meditations to the stars.

Fate readers’ performance

Can Fate readers, who are principally from America where there are so many local lotteries, psychically tune in to the U.K. lottery thousands of miles away? In fact, successful psychical research seems to work independent of distance and time.

So far, 39 Fate readers have made 803 attempts amounting to exactly 11,111 numbers. There are 49 possible lottery balls, of which seven are drawn. Therefore, by random chance we expect to find 11,111divided by 7, or 1,587.3 winners. In fact 1663 winners were predicted, a 4.8% statistically significant excess. If we only consider those predictions made during Libra-times, this excess rises to 8.9 percent, above the 7 percent “money snowball point”!

So what about individual contributors? Earlier we recommended that players should pick at least 60 numbers before assessing their success. Twenty-six of the 39 readers did so by July. The best measure of individual success is the system of guaranteed extra prize shares the project uses to reward success. One player was awarded four guaranteed shares, for a performance that was 300 to 1 against chance. All together, Fate readers have won a total of 10 guaranteed shares, another significant excess.

This American record is remarkable. If all 900 previous contributors had done as well throughout the project, it would now be the most convincing evidence ever amassed of both psychical abilities and stellar influence.

So impressive are the Fate results that Mick is now buying extra tickets based solely on Fate readers’ numbers, with winnings going just to them.

How to test the Libra-times

The table at the end of this article gives the Libra-times in your local clock time. They may be worth testing, not only for lotteries and ESP experiments, but also for any other psychic related activities from meditation to séances.

However, objectively testing the times can be tricky. If you “expect” a more dramatic effect at the Libra-time then you may conjure it up or simply imagine it. Alternatively, you may find that it doesn’t seem to improve anything because “expecting” has introduced some arrogance into the situation.

The best way to approach psi is with humility. Any thought that you can control it and produce it on demand seems to fail. It may be better to introduce the Libra-times into your activities, without any great expectations, and slowly decide whether you think it is helping or not. In the project, emails are sent notifying players, confidentially, of their record to date. Thus, you can test your progress and, hopefully, improve your psychic abilities.

Still room to play

There’s plenty of room for more people to participate; in fact, the larger the group the better the chances of achieving the money snowball effect.

If you would like to take part in the project, all you have to do is contact Mick O’Neill by email at m.on@virgin.net, or call him direct. Mick will send you instructions. Remember, you don’t have to pay for tickets – but you share in the proceeds of the wins, paid out in pounds sterling. The first time you try you get a personal ticket. It’s a fun research!

###

__________

First published in FATE magazine, September 2004. For more information about FATE, visit www.fatemag.com.