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Calculating Root Sums

Lottery Systems — The Basics


“Calculating Traditional Root Sums”


If you have purchased either the 999 Wednesday’s Sun Pick 3 Strategy or our “Play 7-15 Weekly Pair Stretch Chart“, you will need to know how to calculate a root sum.

The instructions are noted below.


Root Sums


In the simplest terms, finding the root sum of a combination involves reducing its sum down to a single digit.


For example, the root sum of “59872” is 4.

You get this by adding all digits of the number / combination together:

5+9+8+7+2=31 and 3+1=4.


You will note that the first sum of the digits added together was 31, but because this is not a single digit, we had to take the additional step by adding those two digits together to get down to a single digit–and to what is called the “root” sum.


Finding Traditional Root Sums  


Let us find the sum of these five (5) Pick 3 combinations, and then take it to its single-digit root sum: 


429=4+2+9=15 and 1+5=6. 6 is the root sum of 429 


837=8+3+7=18, and 1+8=9. 9 is the root sum of 837 


063=0+6+3=9. 9 is the root sum of 063 (since the first sum is already a single digit, we stop there).


482=4+8+2=14 and 1+4=5. 5 is the root sum of 482 


236=2+3+6=2. 2 is the root sum of 236 


SBIP999 Tip:

A simple way to finding root sums is to isolate/forget about any digits that add up to nine (9). For example, in the 236 example, we can easily see that 3+6 equals 9, so we know the root sum is 2. Same deal with the 429: when we discard the 9, we know the root sum is 6. This holds true except in an example like 063 where you would not forget about the nine because that is the total sum.

Last example: 59872–in this combination, when we take out the 9 and the 72 (because it equals 9), we can easily add up the 5 plus 8 to get our root sum of 4 (5+8=13 and 1+3=4)

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