You can take advantage of this fact by figuring out how many tickets are in a “pool” where a grand prize should be. 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.

Or they might all appear at the end of a game.īut the state doesn’t want that to happen. If the prizes were random, then they might all appear at the start of the game. Note that “distributed evenly throughout the game” is not random. You’ll see that they require the grand prizes to be distributed evenly throughout the game. Here’s an image of the procurement document that the Massachusett’s lottery used to elicit bids from ticket printers:

How can it be fair if the biggest prizes of all aren’t even random? Surely the state wants to ensure a fair game. I’m sure all of these insights will come as a surprise. I’ve gained these insights by reading the contracts and procurement documents that state lottery organizations have with their ticket printers.Ĭombine 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? Here are my insights about how to win at scratch-offs. If you’re going to play regardless, you might as well maximize your chances of winning. It won’t always be profitable.īut under the right circumstances, it can be. I’m here to shed light on a new way of thinking about scratch-offs and show you how you can improve your odds. Most penny slots have paybacks that are better than that.Īnd other gambling games, like blackjack, can approach 99% payback without any card counting at all. 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. There are even several movies about it.Īnd 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.īut most people still refer to the lottery as an “idiot tax”.Īnd scratch offs have a notoriously bad expected value (which you can think of as a gambling game’s return on investment). When most people think of advantage gambling, state lottery scratch-offs are the last thing that enters their minds.Įveryone’s heard of counting cards at blackjack. Secrets of State Lottery Scratch-off Contracts

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