Lottery pools have become a very popular feature in lotteries around the world. Also known as syndicates, lottery pools allow players to pool their money together and purchase many lottery tickets as a group, therefore increasing everyone’s chances of winning. In this Lottery Pool Boss Android app review, we will be taking a look at one of few applications available that is specifically dedicated to lottery pools.
Stand-Out Feature
The best feature on offer in Lottery Pool Boss is the ability to create your own custom pools. While there is a set list of existing pools with six lotteries available, the app allows users to enter in an entirely customized pool with a custom lottery. When creating a new pool, users are required to select the lottery name, the required buy-in per game, as well as the draw date of the selected draw.
Once the pool has been created, users may add as many players as they would like to the pool. Players that are added are sent an email invitation to join the pool and can follow the link in the email to join it.
An additional feature is the ability to link a new pool to a previous pool to create a rollover. This function takes any buy-in from a previously unclaimed pool and rolls it over into the newly created pool.
Additional Features
Lottery Pool Boss does not have many additional features, considering that the app was created as a dedicated lottery pool application. However, there are some extras that are worth mentioning.
Powerball & Mega Million Pools: The app shows results for pools that are held for Powerball and Mega Millions. These appear on the home screen of the app and allow easy access to the results. While this, in theory, is a great feature, we found during our review that these links to view the results simply open your device’s external browser to the Powerball or Mega Millions website to display the results. Additional to this, the link that is on the app home screen was always incorrect and resulted in us being directed to a ‘404 Not Found’ error each time that we tried to view any of the results.
Active/Inactive Pools: The app boasts a dedicated screen that can show users what exact pools they have been a part of at a glance. This view is separated between pools that are currently active and are awaiting results, and pools that have expired and either been won or rolled over.
Database Backup: A really nifty feature that is available in the app is the ability to back up your player database. Due to the fact that users are required to manually enter in all player names and email addresses, this could come in handy if users ever need to replace their phone or something happens which requires an app reinstall. The database options are customisable in the settings menu and can be toggled between automatic backup or manual.
Location & Lotteries Available
While users are able to add any custom lottery that they desire, Lottery Pool Boss comes with the following six pre-loaded lotteries:
Arizona: The Pick
California: Super Lotto Plus
Mega Millions
NY: Lotto
NY: Sweet Million
Powerball
User Interface & Usability
While the thought of an app that offers you the ability to organise and track your own lottery pools may be appealing to many people, the reality of this application is a real disappointment.
The design of the app is not terrible; however, it is poorly executed. Certain parts of the application show inline frames (which show active pools) overlapping the text heading of that section so that it is not 100% clear what the section is.
The app is also incredibly buggy, closing at random intervals while in use, and crashing consistently every single time our test device’s screen timeout occurred.* Moreover, the app is very slow to respond to user input and takes a good deal of time to navigate between screens. None of the top lottery apps that we've reviewed have these kinds of problems, so there really is no excuse for Lottery Pool Boss to have them either.
*The app was tested on three different devices, and these problems were clear on all three devices.
Ads
Lottery Pool Boss does win some points back from its lacking user interface when you consider that the application is free to download and does not include any ads.
Conclusion – Lottery Pool Boss Review
The concept of having an application to manage and create your own lottery pools is a great idea and could get many people excited. Unfortunately, the execution of this concept fails miserably with Lottery Pool Boss. With its terrible user interface and constant runtime errors, this is an app that may have a bright future, but at the moment it should be left in a dark corner.
