Content

• Steps
• Part 1 of 3: Buying Smart
• Part 2 of 3: Avoiding Common Mistakes
• Part 3 of 3: One Step Ahead
• Tips
• Warnings
• Sources and Citations

Regardless of your actions, scratch cards are more likely to be lost than won. But if you learn to make the right choices, you will always be one step ahead. By avoiding the common mistakes that the average lotto player makes, you will get extra chances and save yourself from frustration. It's still a gamble, but you can turn your luck in your favor. Start at step 1 to learn more about how to win the scratch card lotteries more often.

Steps

Part 1 of 3: Buying Smart

1. 1 Choose a price. There are different lottery scratch cards sold, with different odds, styles and types. The easiest way to compare them is by price. Typically, the price of scratch cards ranges from $ 1 to $ 20 per piece, depending on the game and where you live. Cheap lottery tickets have a low percentage of winners, lower payouts and a smaller difference between the main and side prizes. More expensive tickets $ 5 and up have a much higher overall winning percentage, with a more even distribution of large payouts, and generally with more cash jackpots.
   • In other words, a dollar lottery ticket may win more often, but the main prize will be only a few hundred dollars, and the additional reward will be much lower, while any $ 20 tickets will be won less often, but despite the low probability of winning, you can win several thousand dollars.
2. 2 Examine the odds of winning at your price point. In any lottery, there is a chance that your ticket will be the winner. The fact that some lotteries have a higher chance of winning than others does not mean that you have more opportunities to hit the jackpot, but tickets in such lotteries are more expensive, since the additional winnings are much higher. Buy a ticket in your price range at the highest odds for any winner.
   • For the serious lottery player looking to buy tickets in bulk, it is best to choose the cheapest cards with the highest odds. If a player buys one ticket, it is always better to choose the more expensive one.
3. 3 Check out the small print on the back of your scratch card and see the odds of winning. Compare the odds of winning multiple lotteries before making a weighted purchase. As a rule, the odds are presented in the following form: 1: 5 or 1: 20. This means that 1 out of every 5 or 20 tickets will win.
   • This does not mean that every fifth ticket in a row will win, and it does not mean that in a random sample of 20 tickets, one will necessarily win. It just means that in the total mass of lottery tickets at points of sale throughout the state, there is a certain percentage of winning.
4. 4 Buy in bulk or temporarily refrain from buying. It is rare to see two winning tickets in a row, however there are at least a few winning cards in each packet. Therefore, if you know that the winning cards in a certain pack are already drawn, pause the game for a couple of days, and then return to buy. You can also go to another point of sale or buy another type of lottery ticket. This will make sure you are not wasting money on tickets with an almost guaranteed failure.
   • Scratch rollers are sold in packs with a guaranteed number of winners and losers in each. Usually there are 30 or 40 tickets in a bundle.The only way to get a guaranteed prize is to buy the whole pack. You may remain in the red, but in the end you will feel like a winner.
5. 5 Be around and expect losers. As with slot machines and other gambling games, long losing streaks in lotteries mean you have a better chance of winning if you buy it on time. Try talking to the seller of certain lottery tickets for a couple of good tips on which types of lotteries have recently won and which have not. You don't have to try to find out if this or another ticket will win, but you can find out for sure if a prize has already been drawn.
   • Buy multiple tickets if someone just bought ten tickets right in front of you and lost all the money they invested on them. This is not a guarantee that you will win, but there is a good chance of winning if the previous ten are losing.
6. 6 Check the prize tiers before purchasing a lottery card. Unfortunately, selling scratch cards after all top prizes have been drawn is still legal. Sometimes a leaflet with this information is placed in the store, but sometimes the cards are on sale for weeks. Checking the state lottery page is the easiest way to make sure you're not wasting money.
   • If you have your favorite raffles in a certain price segment, and you are thinking of buying several tickets, you should check before going to the store to see if the main prize has been drawn yet. If the potential winnings on these cards are lower than usual, since the main prize has already been drawn, explore another lottery in the same price segment.

Part 2 of 3: Avoiding Common Mistakes

1. 1 Save your non-winning tickets. Repeated lotteries often take place where you can keep an old ticket from a particular draw to be re-marked. Keep old tickets in an envelope and reuse when announcing additional draws. Submit them hoping for the best. An unlucky ticket can make you money.
   • Occasionally, lottery ticket sales outlets advertise a second marked draw to sell the essentially useless remaining tickets after the main prize has been drawn. Buying tickets just for the extra raffle is definitely not a good idea. Participate only if you already have tickets that were played in the main draw. Do not play just to reserve a ticket for an additional draw.
2. 2 Check all losing tickets. After you collect several winning tickets and decide to exchange them for a reward, return the losing tickets along with them. Always check the non-winning tickets at the point of sale by computer to make sure you haven't missed anything. In lotteries with several different winning options, you can easily overlook this. Checking tickets on a computer does not risk throwing away prize cards.
   • If you would like to keep your tickets in case of an additional draw, ask for the cards to be returned to you and keep them in a safe place until a second draw is announced.
3. 3 Do not buy "Packet Mystery" or any other promotional products. By discounting sets of cards in this way, sellers are trying to get rid of old stocks from those draws where the top prizes have already been paid. While the offer may seem like a lucrative one, keep in mind that the odds of winning tickets are clearly not in your favor when the top prizes have already been drawn. It is better to focus on active games in which the probability of winning is higher and there is a chance to win real money.
4. 4 Examine the card before starting the game. A Canadian professor learned how to plunder tic-tac-toe tickets by noticing a repeating print on winning tickets. Note the difference in printing on the outside of the scratch card.
   • The singleton method assumes that you should look at the grid of printed numbers immediately to the left of the tic-tac-toe block and analyze the pattern structure on each matrix. If one number appears only once out of the entire stack, the probability of winning is about 60%.
   • In most states, this flaw in card production has been corrected. However, it is difficult to say if there is any benefit from this skill, as most points of sale and vending machines do not have the ability to review tickets prior to purchase. But you should still carefully study any signs of falsification or differences in the structure of the pattern, which may be a sign of a manufacturing defect.

Part 3 of 3: One Step Ahead

1. 1 Set a budget for yourself to buy lottery scratch cards and stick to it. Decide how much you can afford to spend on tickets each week. It is very important to decide how much money you can afford to lose because you will be losing money anyway if you play the lottery for a long time. This is guaranteed.
   • When setting a weekly ticket budget, count on cash not used to pay rent, groceries, or other necessary expenses. Lottery enthusiasts can draw money from the stocks for pocket money and entertainment, if any.
   • Never spend more than your budget allows. Resist the temptation to win back. The statistics will not change in your favor.
2. 2 Pick the lottery you like the most and keep playing it until the prizes have been drawn. Lottery tickets can work in the long run. Continue to play the lotto at your chosen price and odds until the top prize is won. Then switch to another draw. It helps to manage the psychological factor of winning and losing. Make it a rule: you cannot play another game.
   • Some serious players have a different philosophical approach to this issue. Alternatively, you could choose a regular shopping store and purchase different types of tickets there. Make one part of your purchase a consistent habit. Since there are always more chances of losing than winning, regardless of the type of lottery, playing consistently is just one way to stay sane.
3. 3 Exit the game as soon as you start winning. If you won with a lottery card, put your money in your wallet and leave. Don't spend more on buying cards than your budget, no matter how small. This will increase your winnings income. As you invest more and more money you won, you are likely to lose it again. The numbers are not your long-term friends.

Tips

• Pay attention to the serial number of the ticket - most of the winning cards come across at the very beginning of the pack.
• You can increase the odds of winning a single scratch card lottery by analyzing the statistics of the prizes that remain. This can be tricky. There are sites that will perform similar calculations for convenience.
• Ask the cashier for a printout of the top prizes that can still be won.

Warnings

• Don't gamble more than you can afford to lose.
• While these tips can help (and some math will help even more), scratch card lotteries are games of chance in which you almost always lose more than you win anyway.

Sources and Citations

1. ↑ http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/win-big-by-playing-scratch-offs/
2. ↑ http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/win-big-by-playing-scratch-offs/
3. ↑ http://www.lotteryappspro.com/scratch-off-tickets.html
4. ↑ http://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/02/how-i-beat-scratch-off-lottery-tickets/70686/
5. ↑ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1