The lottery. It is a game that can tempt the average American, as they typically spend over $1,000 a year playing various types of lottery games.
One popular way to try to win money here is by playing a scratch-off. But, have you ever thought about how many winning tickets are in a roll of scratch-offs?
These are the chances of winning on scratch-off tickets.
Track Grand Prizes
The first thing that you need to figure out is the grand prizes and major secondary prizes available in any given game. Depending on what state you are playing in, you most likely can access this on the state lottery website.
This resource will tell you the exact amount of big prizes printed on all of the scratch-off tickets out there for that game plus the number of big prizes remaining that have gone unclaimed.
Take Texas scratch-offs for example. They list every game currently available to play and what prizes are left.
At the time of writing, Texas has a $1 million crossword scratch off with all four of the grand prize tickets still left unclaimed. Then, it tells you that two of the 18 $20,000 tickets are still left up for grabs and that 21 of the 415 $2,000 tickets still have yet to be claimed.
So, this can be a good way to get an idea of how many big prizes remain on each game if you are serious about buying scratch-off tickets.
Look at the Odds
Most states' lottery games will have a resource that can tell you what the overall odds of winning with scratch-off tickets are in any current game, whether it is $20 or $20,000.
Let's use this game in Texas as an example. It says in small print that the overall odds of winning any money on this game are 1 in 3.42. So, if you bought a bunch of tickets for that game, you would probably need to buy at least four to see any return on investment.
Then, to narrow this down, it not only lists the grand prizes but also how many tickets of each smaller prize were printed out. The game printed over 6,000 tickets worth $500, over 400,000 worth $100, and over one million tickets worth $20.
Once you see the total number of prizes available, you can then take a look at how many of those prizes have already been claimed. At the time of writing, it appears that less than 10% of the prizes in every bracket are still left up for grabs.
With that in mind, you may have to take your initial odds of winning and reduce it to a tenth.
How Many Winning Tickets Are in a Roll of Scratch-Offs?
How many winning tickets are in a roll of scratch-offs depends on what the initial odds were of you winning any amount of money on the game plus how many prizes have already been claimed. Once you figure both of those numbers out, you will get a much better idea of if your game is worth it.
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