Tips To Win Scratch Offs
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Secrets of State Lottery Scratch-off Contracts
When most people think of advantage gambling, state lottery scratch-offs are the last thing that enters their minds.
Everyone’s heard of counting cards at blackjack. There are even several moviesabout it.
And poker has been shown to be a game of skill; just look at the repeat winners of major tournaments like the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.
But most people still refer to the lottery as an “idiot tax”.
And scratch offs have a notoriously bad expected value (which you can think of as a gambling game’s return on investment).
To give you an example of how bad lottery tickets can be, most $1 scratch offs have an expected value of around 60%, meaning for every $1 you spend, you’re expected to get back just $0.60; a $0.40 loss.
Most penny slots have paybacks that are better than that.
And other gambling games, like blackjack, can approach 99% payback without any card counting at all.
I’m here to shed light on a new way of thinking about scratch-offs and show you how you can improve your odds. It won’t always be profitable.
But under the right circumstances, it can be. If you’re going to play regardless, you might as well maximize your chances of winning.
Here are my insights about how to win at scratch-offs. I’ve gained these insights by reading the contracts and procurement documents that state lottery organizations have with their ticket printers.
Combine these insights with sites that calculate a scratch-off ticket’s odds, and you’ll be playing like a sharp
Where Are Scratch-off Grand Prizes?
Grand prizes are not random.
I’m sure all of these insights will come as a surprise.
But this one is probably the biggest.
Surely the state wants to ensure a fair game.
How can it be fair if the biggest prizes of all aren’t even random?
Here’s an image of the procurement document that the Massachusett’s lottery used to elicit bids from ticket printers:
You’ll see that they require the grand prizes to be distributed evenly throughout the game.
Note that “distributed evenly throughout the game” is not random.
If the prizes were random, then they might all appear at the start of the game. Or they might all appear at the end of a game.
But the state doesn’t want that to happen. If all of the grand prizes were claimed at the start of the game, then people would stop playing the game because they would have no shot at the big money.
You can take advantage of this fact by figuring out how many tickets are in a “pool” where a grand prize should be. If there are 9,000,000 tickets and 3 grand prizes, then divide 9,000,000 by 3 to figure out that there must be 1 grand prize every 3,000,000 tickets.
Then, use the state’s lottery website to figure out how many tickets remain. Most states publish this information for each game.
In the example game just mentioned, if there were 7,000,000 tickets remaining and still 3 remaining grand prizes, then you know the first grand prize must be in the next 1,000,000 tickets. Your odds just improved from 1 in 3,000,000 to 1 in 1,000,000.
That may not seem like much, but it can mean the difference between negative and positive expected value.
Is There A Limit To The Number Of Big Winning Tickets In A Roll?
Here’s an image from documents filed as part of a Texas lawsuit against the state and the ticket printer:
In this contract that Texas has with IGT, there’s a clause that states that there can be no more than a certain number of $25-$50 winners per pack of tickets. There’s another clause that states there can be no more than one winner of $75 and higher per pack. (The “one” is redacted, but we can deduce that tit’s one by looking at the word following the redaction, which is “winner” rather than “winners”).
How can you use this to your advantage?
Buy only one ticket from a pack at a time and scratch it right there at the store.
If it happens to be a big winner, don’t buy any more tickets from that pack.
What Is The Minimum Payback for a Roll of Scratch-off Tickets?
This next image is from the request for a proposal from the New Mexico lottery association to ticket printers:
It shows that each pack of tickets has some guaranteed payout. The details of the guaranteed payout aren’t specified, but from other contracts and personal experience, I’ve found it to typically be about 50% of the price of a pack of tickets. If an entire roll of tickets costs $600, then the GLEP is usually about $300.
What this means for the advantage player is that you should not stop buying after a string of losers.
Since each roll of tickets is guaranteed to have a certain minimum payout, then every loser you see increases the chance that the remaining tickets are winners.
Conclusion
While none of the above insights will guarantee you will win, they are just a few of the things you can do for yourself if you want to know how to beat scratch-offs.
Combine these insights with some expected value calculations from the remaining prizes that get displayed on the state lottery websites and you’ll be doing way better than the average lotto player.
Good luck.
About the Author
Eric Ihli, a professional gambler/programmer, spent 10 years as a full-time professional gambler and 5 years as a software engineer. He now combines those two passions by writing software to discover and evaluate profitable gambling opportunities.
Scratch-off tickets are a fun way to pass the time. You go into a gas station and buy a couple from time to time, but does anyone ever make money from them? They obviously don’t want you to, but if you’re smart, you can have a good time while still walking away with a good chance of winning.
The way they work is pretty simple. You can buy scratch-off lottery tickets from your local convenience store, then use a hard object to scratch-off the foil and reveal prize money. It may even be big prize money. You can also do more than just make your money back. You can make $100, $500, $1,000, or possibly even more.
Our first piece of advice? Don’t give up right away. Read the rest of our scratch-off ticket strategies below.
1 – Don’t Give Up
You may get frustrated if your first ticket doesn’t reveal anything. I’ve scratched off tickets and revealed absolutely nothing more times than I can count, but I don’t give up when I get a dud.
Scratch-offs can feel particularly frustrating when you don’t win, especially when you spend a lot of time scratching for all you’re worth. But that’s part of the fun! The problem with scratch-offs is that you can wear yourself out scratching the day away, but just like any other game of chance, there’s always a winner somewhere.
Keep scratching even if you have a dud. You never know which ticket will be the winning one. There’s a ticket somewhere in there with $1,000 in it. And a few duds is worth it if you get the big ticket.
2 – See If the Big Fish Is in the Pond
Don’t buy scratch-offs to a game that’s already been won. Many of the biggest prizes are already won while the cards are still for sale. You don’t want to buy a card if there’s no chance of reeling in the big one.
Check your state’s website to see what prizes have already been claimed, then you’ll know which tickets are worth dropping a little money on and which tickets are duds just waiting for a sucker to come along.
The average scratch-off player probably never checks a state’s website to see if the prize is still available. If you do, you’ll be one step ahead of the next guy. And that just means you’ll be one step closer to winning.
There are different websites for every state. You need to find the website for your state that shows your claimed scratch-offs.
3 – Read the Fine Print
Check the fine print for any scratch-off cards you buy. Scratch-off makers put lots of rules on the back of the cards. If you’re smart, you can figure out how to get the best odds and ensure you’re buying the tickets most likely to win.
Remember, playing scratch-offs is the same as playing any other game of chance. If you want more of a sure thing, go for the card with better odds. It’s better to win a little bit here and there than to keep trying for the big money (where the odds are definitely not in your favor).
Of all the recommendations I have for you, this is the big one. Choosing the right scratch-off game is critical to long-term success.
Think about professional gamblers. What games do they play? They play the games that are most in their favor. Now, I’m not talking about people who have tons of money from some other source and just gamble a lot. I’m talking about the people who gamble for a living, who keep the lights on with the money they win or lose.
These guys and gals choose games like real money blackjack, games where they can scrape away at the house’s edge through skill and walk away with much better odds. Believe it or not, you can do the same when it comes to scratch-offs.
Because the odds can vary so much from game to game, the most important decision you can make is choosing which game to play.
Start by playing a variety of games. Read the fine print on the back and see what the odds are. Make a note of games that have particularly good odds because those might end up being your go-to game.
Once you have that list, start narrowing it down. Figure out which games have the absolute best odds, then measure that against the games you really enjoy playing. Remember, there’s no point to all of this if you’re not having any fun!
You can also find out other helpful information on the back of scratch-offs. You can be smart and gain an advantage by being educated when you buy. So many people don’t read the fine print and just buy whatever the guy behind the counter has in stock. Be smarter than those other guys—educate yourself.
4 – Buy Stacks of Cards
Don’t go into the convenience store and just buy one scratch-off card. That’s what they want you to do. The manufacturers expect consumers to only buy one card at a time because they know their odds of winning are higher when you’re only buying one or two of them.
I used to go into the convenience store and buy one scratch-off ticket at a time, sometimes, it was all I could afford. I’d put all my money into one scratch-off card and hope that it would pay off. Then, when I had another clunker, I would tear it up and throw it in the trash.
I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I was reading the fine print on the cards. I was playing the active games that still had big prizes available. I never gave up. I would buy four tickets in a row, one at a time, and not win anything. I was ready to pull my hair out.
Buy as many cards as you can afford at a time. Don’t order one card at a time like I used to. Go to the counter and ask for as many cards as your budget (and good common sense) allows. Let me explain why this works better.
The manufacturers spread out the winning cards when they deliver them to the convenience store. So, if you buy one card at a time, you don’t have a good chance of winning. You’ll be stuck buying one card at a time all night like a sucker. If you buy in bulk, you increase your chances of winning because you are much more likely to burn through the duds and hit the winner.
Buy as many cards as your budget allows (within reason). You want to have a good size stack in your hands. The bigger the stack, the better your odds of getting a winner.
5 – Submit Your Tickets Even If You Think You Lost
One of the biggest problems with scratch-off tickets is that it’s sometimes unclear whether you’ve won or lost. Especially for some tickets (like bingo games), you can easily make a mistake, miss a number, and totally miss the fact that you actually had a winning ticket.
The only way to be absolutely certain whether you won or lost is to submit the ticket. Every ticket has a code on it that can be scanned by the cashier. If you made a mistake (and believe me, this happens more often than I’d like to admit), then you’ll catch yourself (and ensure you get the big win) by submitting every ticket.
6 – Study the Lay of the Land
This strategy always helps me. I go into convenience stores and buy my first ticket. Sometimes, I win big on the first one. But whether or not I win, I like to hang around and see what the tickets have been like that day.
Secret To Winning Scratch Offs
If you’re walking into a convenience store or other outlet that has a lot of traffic and a lot of purchases, that means more people are buying tickets (and you have a lower chance of winning).
The stores that have little traffic have the winning cards in there somewhere. If you’re continually purchasing your cards at just this store, and few people are buying cards in between you and your next purchase, you’re much more likely to hit the win.
7 – Look for Second Chance Lottos
The lotto is a little different from scratch-off tickets, but you can definitely still win even if the big prize gets picked up—and some people find the lotto a lot more fun than scratch-offs.
Did you know some lottery tickets have second chance lottos? 43 of the 44 states that hold lotteries have second chance lotteries. This could be another chance for you to win big.
“A Kansas woman won $25,000 in Home Depot gift cards, a Georgia man won a Kia sedan and a California woman won $500,000 all within two weeks.”
Just because you lose the big prize doesn’t mean you can’t win in a second chance lottery.
Conclusion
Lotto Scratch Off Tips
Scratch-off tickets are widely available at convenience stores around the world. You won’t win every time you play, but if you’re smart, you can increase the odds. If you use these seven tips for winning scratch-offs, you can make all your friends jealous of your scratch-off success.
Tell us which of these tips you use the most in the comments.