Pick Winning Scratch Off Lotto Tickets
Everyone has the fantasy of hitting it big off of a small gamble on a scratch off ticket, but only few do. The opportunity to make a fortune off of a small, one time $1-$30 wager is incredibly tempting, but why leave it all up to chance? Learn pick the scratch off cards with the best probability of paying out, and know what odds you are paying for! Let your scratch off lottery ticket experience be an investment, and not a gamble.
Instructions
1. Know which state you live in. Since lotteries are run by individual states, each state will sell a different series of scratch cards.
2. Find your state's lottery website, which will be the first Google result after searching, for example, "NY lotto" or whatever your state's abbreviation may be.
3. Find the scratch off information section. This may be linked under "scratchers," or "instant win games." It is pretty intuitive.
4. I am going to be using the NY lottery scratchers as a specific example, but this information is applicable to all other state lotteries. Now that you have found yourself situated where all of the information is, you must decide your budget for scratch cards. Here is where it is beneficial to compare the odds on the differently priced tickets.
5. Generally, the higher the cost of the scratch off ticket, the higher the OVERALL ODDS of winning are. This is the chance of winning ANY type of prize, be it simply your money back or the jackpot. For example, for a $1 Loose Change ticket from the NY lottery, the overall odds of winning are 1 in 4.71.
6. Meanwhile, a $30 win $1,000,000.00 A Year For Life has overall winning odds of 1 in 2.93. Basically, you are paying for all of the additional ways to win prizes seen here.
7. A good way to compare tickets is to see which prize has the best odds of being won. On our Loose Change card above, that payout is $1, a refund of your purchase, with odds 1 in 8.58. On our Million a Year card, it is the $35 payout, with odds 1 in 6.56. That means more winning tickets will pay out $35 than any other, even ones that simply refund the money. Because the Million a Year card gives you a better chance of winning MORE than a refund, it is a tempting option.
8. It is important to note that just because you are paying more money for better overall odds, it does NOT mean you are getting better JACKPOT odds. If you are looking to win any BIG PRIZE, then a lower stakes ticket is probably a better option, because the odds of winning the smaller jackpots are better. This is clearly detailed with our two examples, with 1 in 48,000 winning the $500 Loose Change grand prize, and a lonely 1 in over 3 million winning a cool Million a Year for Life. In few other circumstances though does it make statistical sense for you to purchase a $1, as you are buying the worst possible odds of getting your money back. States make most of their instant game revenue from selling $1 tickets.
9. Therefore, expect to see yourself winning more of the middle-tier prizes as you pay more for scratch cards. Here is another good example with a $10 Holiday Cash Word. As anticipated, we see overall odds right between our $1 and $30 cards. But unlike a $1 card, the chance of winning DOUBLE your money ($20) is actually better than only getting a refund.
10. After you've selected a scratch card price that is suitable for you, it is important to continue your research. Not all cards have the same odds for the same price! This is because of the varieties in payouts. As a final lesson, we will compare two $5 cards.
11. First are the odds for a very poplar card, Win $2,000.00 a Week For Life. NY Lotto knows that the prospect of winning for LIFE is very tempting, so they charge slightly more for the odds, with overall odds of 1 in 5.09. The average overall odds on a $5 card are 4.817, so anytime you see odds worse than that, you can know you are paying more for a chance at a better payout, but is the ratio of a decrease in overall odds to an increase in payouts fair?
12. Here we have a New York Poker $5 scratch off ticket. Notice the great variety of ways to win! Because there are so many ways to win, overall odds are nicely discounted at 1 to 4.08 (remember, the average for $5 is 4.817!) Also, the likelihood of winning $5 on this ticket is greater than winning $5 on Win for Life (odds 1 in 10 versus odds 1 in 11.59). Since price is equal, NY Poker is statistically a "better" card than Win for Life. The only incentive to play Win For Life is if you are only playing for the grand JACKPOT, and even if so, the grand Jackpot for NY Poker is a nice $50K a year for 20 years, and though still very small, you have much better odds of winning it!
