Jan 29, 2012 Desperate to stop gambling. I am addicted to scratch off lottery tickets. Mostly the $20 dollar ones. The last few years things have been really bad and ive lost nearly all of my money. Every Friday I find myself at the store frantically shoving $20 bills into the machine and scratching away. Problem is I can. The same thing can be applied to Scratch-Off Tickets. Many people who are obsessed with purchasing lottery tickets are just as compulsive and out of control when it comes to these. A woman was charged with stealing nearly $69,000 from her employer to fuel her addiction to scratch-off lottery tickets. The same thing can be applied to Scratch-Off Tickets. Many people who are obsessed with purchasing lottery tickets are just as compulsive and out of control when it comes to these. A woman was charged with stealing nearly $69,000 from her employer to fuel her addiction to scratch-off lottery tickets. The reason your odds of winning scratch-off lottery tickets are so much higher than winning a billion-dollar jackpot is a matter of simple economics: The winnings are typically much, much smaller. It's not uncommon to score $5, $10 or $20 from a one-dollar gas station lottery scratcher. You don't have to worry about taxes on these amounts.

Buy all 100 in a single game at one store.	2 votes (28.57%)
Buy 100 in different games at one store.	No votes (0%)
Buy 1 in the same game at 100 stores.	3 votes (42.85%)
Buy 1 in different games in 100 stores.	No votes (0%)
Other (Explain)	2 votes (28.57%)

7 members have voted

Ayecarumba

It is generally assumed that winning scratch off lottery tickets are double-blind randomly distributed. However, I suspect some 'scattering' (probably systematically, but possibly manually) of the occassional 'clumps' of winners is conducted to ensure that they are more evenly distributed throughout an entire print run. I have no facts to back this up, just my observation, and a guess based on how it would work if I ran the world.
In any case, If I was going to purchase 100 $1 scratchers, what would be the optimal strategy to maximize the chance of a big winner?

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MathExtremist

Without additional information it doesn't matter. The pool you're drawing from may be partitioned into subsets with varying properties, but you have no information about how that's done or where each subset may be. From your perspective it's as if it wasn't done at all. Given that, save gas money and buy everything from one store.
Edit to add: I just noticed your poll replies and one involves multiple games. From that standpoint, buy tickets from the game with the highest probability of an award which qualifies for your 'big award' threshold.

'In my own case, when it seemed to me after a long illness that death was close at hand, I found no little solace in playing constantly at dice.' -- Girolamo Cardano, 1563

dwheatley

Interesting question, but I believe the answer is 'It doesn't matter'.
Assuming the games have an equal number of big winning tickets left (check the claimed prizes statement before buying any), and have the same random 'scattering', it shouldn't matter which games you buy from.
Now, there are two cases to consider: every store has, say, 1 big winner, OR, the big winners are randomly scattered so that some stores have 0 and some stores have many. Problem is, in the 2nd case you don't know which store you are at! I believe the odds work out to be the same in the end.
The only way to take advantage of known scattering (e.g. 1 big winner per store), is to buy & scratch one at a time from the same store until you hit, then move on to the next store. If you buy them all up front without scratching, I say it's all a wash.

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FleaStiff

Yes, I would expect some sort of 'adjustments' to be made to the winners prior to their being shipped out. I don't know how long a game goes for but you don't want any 'winners' too early. Also you don't want winners concentrated at particular vendors. So the Lottery scratchoff computer program would look like this:
Create Placeholders for Dummy Numbers that won't win.
Salt-in the winning numbers in some sort of fashion that all vendors and all mailing dates are included.
Create a Print Run that prints everything on one set of printers to be cut into rolls and sent to vendors.
Result: High volume vendors are more likely to have winners and print runs just prior to mailing dates would be richer also.

P90

IDK if that would be necessary. You certainly want some winners early. You just don't want the main prize won too quickly, all the rest are expendable. So it makes sense to place the main prize somewhere among the last issue of the tickets.
Random distribution should take care of the rest. It's not particularly important for each individual store to have a winner, as media and social media can take care of getting the word around.

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Ayecarumba

Let's assume that I buy tickets for the same game in a single store one at a time, revealing each one as I go. Assume that I hit a big prize, but not the top prize, on the 10th one. Should I stop purchasing tickets at that store, reasoning that only minor prizes and losers remain, or keep buying, reasoning it doesn't matter if I change stores or games since they are randomly distributed?

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication - Leonardo da Vinci

DJTeddyBear

There is no ideal time or place to purchase them. You could check the state's website to see how many tickets & top prizes remain, but keep in mind that the info is dated.
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As far as clumping and scattering and 'salting' goes, you're all way off.
The lottery purchases ALL the tickets for a particular game from the printing company at one time. It is the most economical way to print. Whether each order amounts to a couple boxes, a couple pallet sized forklift loads, or even truckloads, is unknown. But it's also irrelevant.
If the game is popular, the lottery makes a minor change to the design, such as the background color, on each successive replacement order. Keep that in mind if you have any old, uncashed tickets. Although the game remains the same, each printing run is considered a separate game, and the one year to cash winners starts shortly after they run out or stop distributing a particular printing run.
So the printer delivers all the tickets. Each box contains dozens of shrink wrapped packeges of tickets. Probably 12 dozen packages per box, and 100 to 500 tickets per package, depending upon the physical size.
The printer 'probably' scatters the winners only to a very small degree if at all. I.E. Perhaps limiting each package to a maximum of one top prize. Beyond that, everything is irrelevant because when they are delivered to the lottery's warehouse, things get moved around. And the individual stores order the tickets by the package not by the box.
Am I painting a picture yet? There is no master plan that directs a particular ticket to a particular store.
Scratch off tickets videos

What I'm trying to say is, the normal warehousing and distribution will scatter the winners without any deliberate attempt to scatter them. It will also, completely by chance, occasionally allow one store to get more than one of the top prizes of a particular game.

Are Scratch Off Tickets Gambling Sites

FYI: Theft of the lottery tickets is not an issue. Each shrink wrapped package has a unique barcode on the back of all the tickets. When the lottery retailer opens a package of tickets, he has to activate that bar code. Until then, you can't cash any of the winners from that package. The only tickets worthwhile to a thief, are the ones in the dispenser case at the retailer. The unopenened ones in the stockroom are worthless if stolen.

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pacomartin

However, I suspect some 'scattering' (probably systematically, but possibly manually