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Tag: <span>scratcher tickets</span>

Tag: scratcher tickets

The Missing Scratchers Stats: States Not Included on the Site

ScratcherStats.com aims to provide lottery enthusiasts and scratcher players with the data tools to make the best choices when standing at the convenience store counter. And you can get this data on remaining prizes for many US states in the same place! Sure, you can look at the data on the official lottery commission websites, but here you get all the stats for each state – we do the math for you, so you can know exactly how many tickets to buy for the best odds of winning a profit.

Map of US states whose lottery scratch off data is included ScratcherStats.com or not.

However, you may have noticed that the map on the home page only shows a limited number of states. Much like with the lottery in general, many states offer scratch-offs while others do not. If they do offer lottery scratch-offs, then most state lottery commissions commit to being transparent and provide players with data on the number of prizes out there. Like casinos, lottery commissions know that players will keep playing if they get information to work with. But some states don’t put enough data for us to calculate the statistics. Some states block us from grabbing that data. 

For us to work with the data, we have three requirements: 

  1. The ability to automatically grab the data off the lottery’s website. 
  2. The overall odds of winning a prize, to calculate the total number of tickets issued.
  3. The number of remaining scratch prizes, to know the currents odds of winning after prizes are claimed.

Here’s three examples of states we couldn’t include on ScratcherStats.com:

No Odds Data – New Jersey

New Jersey is absent from ScratcherStats.com because the New Jersey Lottery Commission does not provide detailed information on the odds of winning for their scratcher games. Without this critical data, it is impossible to calculate the statistics that ScratcherStats.com relies on to provide users with valuable insights. We can’t tell you percent of prizes of the total remaining scratchers, because that calculation requires the odds multiplied by the total number of prizes. You might as well just go directly to the New Jersey Lottery website for what little data they offer.

Missing Data on Remaining Prizes – Colorado

Colorado is another state with incomplete data on the website. Colorado does provide the odds of winning for their scratcher games and the number of prizes at the start of a game. However, the Colorado lottery website doesn’t post updated numbers on remaining scratcher tickets with unclaimed prizes. Without that data, we can’t improve much on what’s already posted on the CO Lottery website.  We could only provide a list of the scratcher games with the best odds when the game started, which could have been months or even years earlier.

No Prize Numbers At All – Iowa and Wisconsin

Iowa’s lottery website provides some data on their scratch games, such as the overall odds per game and even the odds per prize. But the site offers neither the number of prizes remaining nor the number of prizes issued at the start of the game, nor even a total number of prizes issued. Thus, there’s no data to calculate scratch game statistics with.

Lottery Data Locked in a JPEG or PDF – Delaware and Pennsylvania

Most lottery commission websites post the data in HTML tables, or within DIVs. Some make the data available within JSON format through API requests. However, Delaware posts their data within a picture. For each scratch off game, you can see the data within a jpeg format picture, like this. Did Delaware post the data for you to see? Yes. But can we easily get it to use for statistical calculations? Not so much. Maybe we’ll figure that out sometime. Likewise, Pennsylvania posts the data on remaining prizes for each scratch-off game in an HTML table, but only for the top six prizes! The rest of the data is in a PDF like this.

Data Gathering Restrictions – South Carolina

South Carolina’s lottery website implemented measures to prevent automated data scraping, making it challenging for websites like ScratcherStats.com to collect the necessary information. This technical obstacle has resulted in South Carolina’s exclusion from the website.

No Lottery Scratchers – Utah, Alabama, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii

Utah stands out as a state that does not offer lottery scratchers at all. Blame the legacy of the Church of Latter Day Saints in Utah, or the southern Baptist belt for Alabama. Nevada, with its thriving casino industry, has chosen not to introduce lottery scratchers to avoid competition with its established gaming sector. As a result, there are no scratcher games in Nevada to report statistics for on ScratcherStats.com. Other states that don’t offer the lottery at all include Alaska and Hawaii.

Weak Search Traffic – Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, Vermont 

These states are beautiful, and maybe that’s why Google Trends shows few to none search traffic for lottery scratch games – because people have too many other things to do. No matter whether using “scratchers”, “scratch off”, “scratch games”, these states don’t make the list on the Google Trends’ map. So we’d rather put the effort into data for states where there’s demand for data on the lottery scratchers with the best odds.

States Coming Soon

On a more positive note, ScratcherStats.com is continually working to expand its coverage. States like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Arkansas are expected to be represented on the website in the near future. The inclusion of these states will broaden the scope of data available to scratcher players and enthusiasts.

Conclusion

While ScratcherStats.com strives to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on scratcher games across the United States, we’ll never be able to include every state due to the unavailability of data, technical restrictions, or unique state policies. However, the website continues to grow and evolve, with plans to include more states in its coverage, ensuring that scratcher players have access to valuable statistics to enhance their gaming experience.

aside background | Lottery rules

9 Tips for Winning California Lottery Scratchers

We’ve been studying the secrets behind the California Lottery Scratcher system to really understand the ways the Average Joe can maximize his chances. Here’s some tips you should remember before you buy any lottery scratcher:

the 9 tips for maximizing chances at winning money with Virginia Lottery scratcher tickets.
The 9 tips in short

1. Check the scratcher prize odds first.

Many don’t realize it but the California Lottery commission posts all the odds for each game on its website: https://www.calottery.com/scratchers. The website shows the overall odds for winning any prize along with the odds of winning the top prize. For this $30 scratcher game, that comes to 1 in 2.98 for any prize and 1 in 3,025,367 for the top prize of $10 million.

That means you can do the math and see whether it’s worth a higher cost for better odds of prizes that return more money. In comparison to that $30 per ticket scratcher game which has odds of 1 in 2.98 for winning $30 or more, this $1 scratcher game has odds of 1 in 4.56 of winning a prize. Additionally, the odds of winning the top prize for that $30 game may be much better – 1 in 480,631 – but the top prize is only $5,000

2. Check the number of remaining lottery scratcher prizes

While you’re looking at the scratcher game pages, you may have noticed the table showing the number of prizes remaining in circulation for that game along with the number of prizes distributed at the start of the game. Every seller of scratchers scans winning prizes into the California Lottery system, so they know exactly how many prizes remain available to win. The CALottery.com website updates these counts daily.

While you may be just as likely to win a prize at any time, due to random disbursement of prizes among the rolls issued to sellers, logically it makes sense that fewer prizes in circulation = prizes are harder to find. The remaining prize counts will tell you if this scratcher game is more depleted than others.

3. Check the current odds, not just the starting odds, from the number of remaining scratchers

Under number 1, I should have said you can check what the odds were at the start of game. You can calculate the current odds of winning any prize from the count of remaining prizes, if you do a little reverse math: total up the number of prizes remaining and multiply the sum by the overall odds to get the total number of scratcher tickets issued. Then divide the sum of prizes from that total of tickets issued.

Note that the overall odds never change – you used that number to calculate the total tickets issued, after all, and in theory all prizes are claimed equally over time. However, you can calculate the probability of landing any particular prize from the count of remaining tickets with that prize. AND you don’t have to rely on the outdated initial count of prizes issued; it can be accurate within the last 24 hours.

If that sounds like a lot of work, we’re here to help! Check out our list of current odds for all scratchers on our home page: scratcherstats,com. In fact we take it one step further – that list ranks the scratchers by the best current odds. See our Methods page for more details on the rankings by probability.

4. Don’t just check the probability of any prize, but the probability of winning prizes that return a profit

Winning a prize is always fun, but more often that prize will be for the amount of time you spent buying that ticket. Don’t get me wrong, I like getting money back, but I prefer getting a little something extra. That’s why you should calculate the probability of winning a profit, not just the probability of winning any prizes, from the number of prizes remaining. On our ranking list, we’ve factored that into the rankings. Find out more about how we compiled that ranking here.

The odds of a “profit prize” are lower than winning any prize, of course. For example, looking at the statistics we list for each California scratcher, the average of winning any prize is 19%, while the average of winning a profit is 12%. But those odds of a profit range depending on the game, anywhere from 3% to 21%. If you plunk down cash for a scratcher, you’re going to want to get the one most likely to return some extra cash. That’s why you should use our list before buying.

5. Play the games with more prizes, not bigger prizes

If you’re following the tips above then you’re ready to play for more frequent small wins rather than rare big wins. Think of trying to find lots of coins buried in the mud with a few rare gold dubloons. If you aim to scoop up as many quarters, dimes, and nickels with the attitude that a big win would be nice but not expected, you may find yourself winning a pretty nice pot of change in the end.

6. Buy more than one scratcher at a time

The heart of the best strategy when buying scratchers is this: buy a string of scratchers, ideally from the same roll. As explained in more detail here, the reason is that you maximize your chances by buying a number of scratchers most likely to contain a winning ticket. Along with calculating the probability of winning tickets from the number of remaining prizes presented on the website, you can can also calculate the standard deviation. Given the statistical laws of a normal distribution, you are 99.7% likely to turn up at least one winning ticket when purchasing a string of tickets equal to the odds of winning plus three standard deviations from a single roll of scratchers.

7. Buy only the number of scratchers you need to win a prize

Some people think buying a whole roll of scratchers will guarantee a big winner, or at least enough prizes to make some money over the amount spent on the roll. But according to the law of diminishing returns, that’s a waste of money. You’ll get a minuscule increase in odds by buying all those tickets. On the other hand, you can maximize your potential returns by buying a number of tickets equal to one standard deviation from the mean odds of a prize worth more than the cost of the ticket (i.e., mean “profit” prize odds + one standard deviation). Depending on the scratcher game, that means buying anywhere from 28 to just 4 tickets. The logic is explained in this blog post.

The ranking of scratchers provides a list of scratcher tickets with the best tradeoff between number of tickets to buy and probability of winning. Filter the list for the scratchers that require the least number of tickets in order to win a prize. Of a total 85 scratchers, there are 19 of which you need to only buy 10 tickets for the best odds of winning.

8. Take advantage of second chances

California Lottery offers second chances to a win with your losing tickets. Scratch off that logo to find the scratcher serial number and you can enter to win a drawing every week for a prize worth up to $25,000. In fact, if you keep an eye out, you might find these second chance tickets in the trash.

9. Keep your losers for tax season

The IRS lets you deduct gambling losses from your winnings. If you do win, you’re going to want to keep all your winnings, of course. The way to do that is to take advantage of tax deductions. Doing so means you keep the government from claiming 24% of those winnings. Read this blog post for more details.

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Is the Best Lottery Strategy to Buy New Scratchers?

Whenever the lottery releases new scratchers, people buy the new scratch-off games on the blind faith that the newer the game the better the chances to getting the remaining prizes before they’re claimed. But is buying new scratchers really the best strategy? 

We took a look at the data, and the answer is: Not really. In fact, you might have slight advantage buying older scratcher games. 

Scratchers can be worth buying, at least some that have better than average odds. They can have much better odds of actually winning some cash than the big name Virginia Lottery games like Megamillions, Keno, or Pick 3 and Pick 4.

But it might not matter when you buy them. The real question is: which scratchers are the best to buy right now? The only metric that matters is whether a scratcher game has the best odds for a high probability of winning prizes. 

Data Shows Tickets Go Fast at First . . .

Since we gather the data posted every day on the official Virginia Lottery website at VALottery.com, we can easily see whether the probabilities of winning a prize get any better or worse the longer the game goes on. Is it going to be Extreme Millions, or Hot 777s? Here at ScratcherStats.com, our first four of 9 tips for winning Virginia Lottery scratchers are to check the scratchers data. You can find a ranking list on our site and more in-depth stats here also.

Right now, among the 85 scratcher games available in Virginia, 44 have only been in circulation for less than 90 days, including four that started just this month. 

Surely, these games have more prizes remaining, including top prizes. From data collected February 22 through April 18, 2022, people throughout Virginia bought about 543,000 scratchers per day. This number excludes the tens of millions of new scratchers that the Virginia Lottery commission injects into stores every month. As you can see in this chart, Virginia store shelves received a boost of 19.2 million tickets on March 2 and 11.1 million on April 9.

Chart showing the number of winning scratcher tickets available, and the number of non-prize tickets calculated from the odds, using the data posted daily on VAlottery.com
Scratchers remaining daily based on VALottery.com data

Another chart, below, shows the average number of prizes claimed by the number of days since the game’s start date. Just a quick look at this one and you can see that people buy many more tickets at the start of the game. So, in a way, the top winning scratchers are the new games. In fact, by the end of the first 60 days, you can expect that people will have bought over 1.5 million tickets – and about 21% of those are for scratch-off games that started less than 60 days earlier. 

. . . but Most New Scratcher Tickets are Losers

Here’s the really interesting part: the ratio of people buying losing tickets is higher than winners for those first 60 days or so. While the average of winners bought to losers is usually 22% to 78%, during the first 60-90 days this ratio shifts to 14% winners and to as much as 86% losers.

Line chart showing the number of winning tickets and non-prize tickets claimed in the time after a scratcher game starts, summed in 30-day increments.
Total scratchers bought in the days after a new game starts

While people are buying more scratchers early in a game’s lifespan, more of these scratchers are losing tickets. People clear out more losers from the scratcher rolls when a game is new.

Why then make a fuss about a new scratcher game? The data indicates that you may even benefit from buying older games – there’s fewer losers to waste your time and money on. 

One question is whether the hullabaloo about a new game is for you, the humble gambler with hopes of winning a nice prize, or for the Lottery commission.  You’ll see the Virginia Lottery pump out new holiday-themed games. Even if some have the worst odds of any game, they go quickly. People buy them perhaps as easy office “appreciation” gifts or stocking stuffers. Some games are only open for short period, like Hot 777s – started in January this year and just closed on April 15.

But many games that have been out there for years, like Super Cash Frenzy has been around since March 2018 and still offers two tickets with the top prize of $4 million. Extreme Millions has been around since October 2017. Only recently did it sell out of its four chances to win $10 million but the Virginia Lottery officially closed the game on April 15, 2022. Yet another reason to look at the data is to check for top prizes, though the game may still be worth buying.

The Real Question: Do the Scratcher Odds Ever Get Better?

The fact is that all that really matters is how many scratcher prizes are out there right now. Does the probability of winning scratcher prizes increase the longer a game goes on? 

This scatter plot chart shows that, in fact, the probability does get better for older games. Even as the number of prizes still available decreases from nearly 100% to around 25%, the average probability of winning a prize actually increases, albeit slightly. The average probability changes from 25% for those games in their first 60 days to an average 28% for games older than three years. 

Scatter plot of the average percent of scratcher prizes remaining unclaimed and the probability of winning over time from the game start date, by number of days. Includes trendlines showing an R-square of 0.221 for percent remaining and 0.106 for probability of winning.
Scratcher prizes remaining and the average probability over time from game start

So buying older scratcher games can be a good lottery scratchers strategy because it offers an edge – at least a thin edge. Is it because many of the losing tickets have been bought already? Maybe that has an effect. The correlation between time and probability is nearly none – only an R-square of 0.106, meaning that the days since the game start date only explains about 10.6% of the variation in the prize probability.

Still, some edge is better than none. The trick to buying scratchers is to be choosey when picking the lottery scratcher game. Don’t just buy the game because it’s new.

Buy Scratchers by the Best Odds, Not the Age

When you examine games for how many remaining winners are in circulation, then all that matters is which give you the best odds right now. It doesn’t matter if the game started yesterday, or five years ago. It doesn’t even really matter if the top prize is already gone. What really matters is: which scratcher game offers the best odds for you?

If you want to know which is the best lottery scratcher to buy in Virginia, then use the data in this list. You can filter it by the best scratcher odds, based on a daily counts of data offered by the official Virginia Lottery website. Find even more stats for each Virginia Lottery scratcher game on this page.

Here’s a pro tip: look for the scratchers that require buying the fewest for the best chances of winning by using our “max tickets to buy” measure.

Use this data to your advantage – and you might just land some cash in your wallet!

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