How To Win Big On Scratchers
Secrets of State Lottery Scratch-off Contracts
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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.
Don’t purchase the cheapest scratchers. There are so many scratch cards out there nowadays that.
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.
Have you heard of Richard Lusting, and how he won seven times in the lottery for the past 2 years? Richard Lusting confess that he was buried in debt two years ago, but after winning a total of $1, 047, 060.50 and a jackpot price of $842,151.92, he lived a life far beyond what he dream of.Nine Tips on How to Win the Lottery
- To increase your probability of winning, you need to buy more tickets. But the downside of this is that you may need to spend lots of money to win a price. The worth of your winnings may not be fully compensated because of the high investment you put in buying tickets. This was proven by an Australian firm who try this trick in a local lottery. But then again, buying more lottery ticket may help improve your chances of winning.
- Form a lottery syndicate where you gather money from lottery players. This means you get more tickets and lottery numbers which means you will all have better chance of hitting the jackpot. The downside is, you may have to share the jackpot price with many people. But maybe, you will not complain if your group won $500 million dollar and you have to divide it between 10 winners! If you don’t want to spend a fortune, playing a lottery syndicate will increase your odds of winning.
- Don’t choose consecutive numbers. For example, if you play a lottery with five winning numbers and you have to choose until numbers 55. The total numbers must be between 104 and 176. Studies have shown that 70% of lottery jackpots have sums that fall in this range.
- Don’t choose a number that falls in the same number group or ending with a similar digit. Although, there is a possibility that you may win, but the probability is very low.
- Look for more unpopular games played at odd times. Don’t go for lottery games that always have a winner try to explore other unpopular games. Most likely, people will all go to that lottery game, so your chance of winning is lesser. Go to the less popular, with lesser game player, so your odd of winning is higher.
- Better if you will play less popular lottery games with fewer players, so you will have less competition. You may try less popular lotteries such as Suprenalotto, Eurojackpot, and Superlotto plus. The jackpot price may seem small but the odds of winning are higher.
- Some people tend to play lotto based from the numbers of their birthday, or the birthday of a family member. If this happens, you will usually get more numbers from 1 to 31, as this corresponds to the days in the calendar method. If you choose numbers above 31, this may not increase your chance of winning but it can boost your probability of not sharing the prize with anyone.
- Keep in mind that every number in the lottery has an equal probability of being chosen as the winning number. There is no software that could predict the exact winning number. But you can increase your chance of not splitting the jackpot price if you use the not so common number.
- Play the right games. There are many kinds of lottery games that you could play. If you join the national lottery draw, there is much broader number pool as compared with a local or state lottery. In a local lottery, you have to be physically present during the draw, but the odd of winning is higher compared with a nationwide lottery.
Seven Time Lottery Grand Prize Winner Shares His Secret
- $10,000 from Scratch-off ticket
- $13,696.03 in Florida Fantasy 5
- Holiday to Los Angeles, amounting to $3,594.66 from scratch-off ticket 2nd chance draw
- Holiday to Memphis, around $4,966 from scratch-off ticket 2nd chance draw
- $842,152.91 from Florida Mega Money
- $73,658.06 in Florida Fantasy 5
- $98,992.92 from Florida Fantasy 5
- Do your Homework.You need to search whether your numbers are a good set of numbers to win the lottery. Remember, every number has an equal chance of winning.
- Don’t go for quick pick numbers. Your chance of winning may not be high if the machines pick the number for you. The odds may not be in your favor.
- Stick to your numbers. Even if you lose a couple of times, stick to the numbers you pick, who knows it may appear next time.
- Don’t follow lotto fever. Some people spend too much when the jackpot price is too high or when it reaches around $300 million dollars or so. Since, more people knew that the jackpot price is higher; people will all swarm to lottery outlet to buy ticket. Of course, with too many people buying the ticket, your chances of winning may be too little.
He shared that a sure way to boost your chances of winning lotto is to pick your own numbers not the quick-pick option. Lustig shared that it doesn’t matter how you come up with your number, the thing is, once you pick your number, research for them and see if it is a good number, then you have to stick with it.
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