Question from a scratch ticket outsider: Are scratch tickets all about dumb luck?

[sageoftruth]

I'm sure plenty of you have had that moment where you're waiting in line in a store and someone in front of you is carefully deliberating which scratch tickets to buy. Since I live across from a convenience store, I see it all the time. To an outsider like me, that makes about as much sense as carefully deliberating whether to call heads or tails on a coin toss, but I understand that in some forms of gambling, one can count cards, or use various strategies to tip the odds in their favor. However, I know nothing about scratch tickets.

So, I have a question for anyone who has used them before. Is there an actual trick to using scratch tickets, or is this just a matter of gamblers wanting to believe they can influence their luck?

 

[Tiger King]

I'm sure plenty of you have had that moment where you're waiting in line in a store and someone in front of you is carefully deliberating which scratch tickets to buy. Since I live across from a convenience store, I see it all the time. To an outsider like me, that makes about as much sense as carefully deliberating whether to call heads or tails on a coin toss, but I understand that in some forms of gambling, one can count cards, or use various strategies to tip the odds in their favor. However, I know nothing about scratch tickets.

So, I have a question for anyone who has used them before. Is there an actual trick to using scratch tickets, or is this just a matter of gamblers wanting to believe they can influence their luck?

Nah it is just blind luck.
I have seen someone win a grand on one but in general you are probably wasting your money.

 

[tippy2k2]

I was a gas station clerk for a while.

There are those who sit there, buy a scratch ticket, scratch, and if they lose, buy another one.
There are those who SWEAR that the ones with the white edge are winners (something to do with the printing process).
There are those who buy a shit ton and just have at it.

Believe me, if there was a special trick to win big, I wouldn't be working anymore. I've seen all three "special tricks" win some good money and I've seen a lot more of them lose their money.

Personally, I always buy the $3 cross-word puzzle ones (you know, every six months or so when I have a few bucks in my pocket and don't mind losing it). Those take about ten minutes to do so I at least feel like I got my money's worth while losing

 

[DefunctTheory]

Different scratch tickets have different pay outs. Some have a higher rate of pay out, but the prizes are smaller, while some only pay out occasional, but offer higher rewards. Some have cash rewards that are equal to the card value, giving you a chance for a freebie.

Since cards are served from a reel, you can't pick which one you get, only the type. That's what they're looking at - which 'lottery' to participate in.

 

[TheRiddler]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

 

[VanQ]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

I think he's joking. This is a strategy people use for poker machines. They usually have a counter on them somewhere and the higher the number, the more people have played on that machine since its last win. This has people think that the more times you use that machine the more likely the next one will be a winning roll.

Unfortunately, probability does not work that way. It is an excellent trick that the poker machine owners play on their users though.

 

[lechat]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

There is no magic trick to winning any lottery. the games are specifically designed so that you put money in and get less money back most of the time, It's been described as the dumb man's savings account since people put a couple bucks in a week in the hopes that eventually strike it rich.
If you were to put the same amount of money into a savings account that another person put into any lottery 10 years later you would statistically have more money in your bank.

 

[newfoundsky]

In Tennessee, each roll is worth 300 dollars (so a roll of five dollar tickets will have 60 tickets). Each roll HAS to pay out at least 130 dollars. Statistically, you should win more on higher value tickets. (As in, you will win more often, not necessarily more money)

I'm a gas station clerk, and have an unfair advantage, but I can pretty much tell when a ticket will hit. It's a total scam though.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

It's more "rigged" than "luck". They're designed for you foolish people to lose, and to give you a rush when doing them so you come back for more. The house always wins, but in this case instead of a casino, it's little bits of paper distributed to news agents across the world that involve 0% thinking, get people hooked, and make more money.

They're like portable pokie machines.

 

[Queen Michael]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

I was just thinking this. If the store's got eight tickets, and one in four is a winner, then every time somebody picks a losing one it'll increase the winner-ticket-to-loser-ticket ratio a little bit.

 

[tilmoph]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

I was just thinking this. If the store's got eight tickets, and one in four is a winner, then every time somebody picks a losing one it'll increase the winner-ticket-to-loser-ticket ratio a little bit.

I think it come down too if that's a winning rate per ticket roll or for the whole game line, and if it's the whole game line, do they try to control for over winner and under winner rolls.

 

[Queen Michael]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

I was just thinking this. If the store's got eight tickets, and one in four is a winner, then every time somebody picks a losing one it'll increase the winner-ticket-to-loser-ticket ratio a little bit.

I think it come down too if that's a winning rate per ticket roll or for the whole game line, and if it's the whole game line, do they try to control for over winner and under winner rolls.

English isn't my nativity language. What's a "ticket roll" and a "whole game line?"

 

[tilmoph]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

I was just thinking this. If the store's got eight tickets, and one in four is a winner, then every time somebody picks a losing one it'll increase the winner-ticket-to-loser-ticket ratio a little bit.

I think it come down too if that's a winning rate per ticket roll or for the whole game line, and if it's the whole game line, do they try to control for over winner and under winner rolls.

English isn't my nativity language. What's a "ticket roll" and a "whole game line?"

Scratch off tickets are sold in rolls (like a paper towel roll) comprised of individual tickets. Each roll is a different scratch off game, which changes payout rates and denominations, win conditions, and rules for scratching.

What I was trying to say was your statement would be true if it was a 1-in-4 win rate for a roll of tickets within a game (25% of the tickets on the roll are a winner), but wouldn't hold true if it was 1-in-4 for a given game in general, without any regard paid to how winning tickets for that game were distributed amongst the individual rolls. basically, if you scratched every ticket from every roll for a given printing, it would be 1-in-4, but without any consistency attempted for win rates between the rolls.

 

[newfoundsky]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

Given that a certain percentage of tickets have to be winners if you remove one (or multiple) losing ticket from the total you will increase your odds of winning, The percentage increase would be incredibly small but it is there.

I was just thinking this. If the store's got eight tickets, and one in four is a winner, then every time somebody picks a losing one it'll increase the winner-ticket-to-loser-ticket ratio a little bit.

I think it come down too if that's a winning rate per ticket roll or for the whole game line, and if it's the whole game line, do they try to control for over winner and under winner rolls.

English isn't my nativity language. What's a "ticket roll" and a "whole game line?"

Scratch off tickets are sold in rolls (like a paper towel roll) comprised of individual tickets. Each roll is a different scratch off game, which changes payout rates and denominations, win conditions, and rules for scratching.

What I was trying to say was your statement would be true if it was a 1-in-4 win rate for a roll of tickets within a game (25% of the tickets on the roll are a winner), but wouldn't hold true if it was 1-in-4 for a given game in general, without any regard paid to how winning tickets for that game were distributed amongst the individual rolls. basically, if you scratched every ticket from every roll for a given printing, it would be 1-in-4, but without any consistency attempted for win rates between the rolls.

Here in Tennessee, it's mandated that every roll HAS to pay out 130 dollars. So, this is SORTA the case, in that a roll can pay out between 130 and the top prize for the game. You can, with some degree of accuracy, predict tickets based on what has already won, or towards the end of the roll, what has already lost and whether or not the 130 dollars has been reached. The issue, I think is predicting the winners themselves.

 

[renegade7]

Well...

If you're good with electronics and don't mind dropping some cash, you can place a thin slice of beryllium window material over the light sensing CMOS array of a digital camera to make yourself a cheapo x-ray vision device. I think United Nuclear might be able to provide that.

And as long as no one gets suspicious about you spending several minutes taking photos of scratch cards before buying one, you'd be able to calibrate it to just barely see through the latex material that covers the printed card.

That or just accept that in most cases, statistically speaking, even a minimum wage job is more profitable than gambling.

 

[CrystalShadow]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

I think he's joking. This is a strategy people use for poker machines. They usually have a counter on them somewhere and the higher the number, the more people have played on that machine since its last win. This has people think that the more times you use that machine the more likely the next one will be a winning roll.

Unfortunately, probability does not work that way. It is an excellent trick that the poker machine owners play on their users though.

I wouldn't trust a poker machine to actually be random though. It wouldn't be hard to program them to have subtly non-random behaviour. This programming obviously is designed to benefit the house, but it's different to something which is actually random.
(I've also heard rumours that some of them are networked together, so the programming subtly influences the odds of an entire room's worth, rather than one specific machine... All designed of course to ensure the average payout is lower than what is put in. A casino doesn't care WHO wins, nor how much they win in one go, so long as on average, their games pay out less than is put into them...)

 

[Toby Stewart]

I don't know how it is in the States, but here in NZ there are a set number of top prizes (i.e. the maximum prize advertised) for each series of scratch tickets, and one must be able to win the top prize on a scratch ticket for it to be in circulation. Once all of the top prizes have been won, that ticket is immediately removed from circulation. A side effect of this law is that the total amount of top prizes and the number of those top prizes already claimed is public information, available from your lotto retailer or the lotto website.

 

[Death_Cometh]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

I think he's joking. This is a strategy people use for poker machines. They usually have a counter on them somewhere and the higher the number, the more people have played on that machine since its last win. This has people think that the more times you use that machine the more likely the next one will be a winning roll.

Unfortunately, probability does not work that way. It is an excellent trick that the poker machine owners play on their users though.

I wouldn't trust a poker machine to actually be random though. It wouldn't be hard to program them to have subtly non-random behaviour. This programming obviously is designed to benefit the house, but it's different to something which is actually random.
(I've also heard rumours that some of them are networked together, so the programming subtly influences the odds of an entire room's worth, rather than one specific machine... All designed of course to ensure the average payout is lower than what is put in. A casino doesn't care WHO wins, nor how much they win in one go, so long as on average, their games pay out less than is put into them...)

A family friend actually does the programming for all the electronic games at several top casino's all over the world and he told me that the odds are programmed at 95:5 so that basically for every $100 played at the machine or group of machines the house gets $95 dollars and the gamblers get $5 although it doesn't make it so obvious.

 

[CrystalShadow]

You have to watch the cashier for a while. Once enough people have put money in without winning, you know it's ripe for a payout. That's when you strike!

Baffle may or may not actually believe this, but I've seen enough people in real life talking about this idea that I feel I should stress this: the strategy doesn't actually work. Your chances are no different one minute after a win than they are two hours after one. Basically, the whole thing's dumb luck.

I think he's joking. This is a strategy people use for poker machines. They usually have a counter on them somewhere and the higher the number, the more people have played on that machine since its last win. This has people think that the more times you use that machine the more likely the next one will be a winning roll.

Unfortunately, probability does not work that way. It is an excellent trick that the poker machine owners play on their users though.

I wouldn't trust a poker machine to actually be random though. It wouldn't be hard to program them to have subtly non-random behaviour. This programming obviously is designed to benefit the house, but it's different to something which is actually random.
(I've also heard rumours that some of them are networked together, so the programming subtly influences the odds of an entire room's worth, rather than one specific machine... All designed of course to ensure the average payout is lower than what is put in. A casino doesn't care WHO wins, nor how much they win in one go, so long as on average, their games pay out less than is put into them...)

A family friend actually does the programming for all the electronic games at several top casino's all over the world and he told me that the odds are programmed at 95:5 so that basically for every $100 played at the machine or group of machines the house gets $95 dollars and the gamblers get $5 although it doesn't make it so obvious.

Wow. Those are some shockingly low odds... And with the right programming, you can actually enforce that by dynamically changing the odds as people play... As long as you aren't too obvious about it, I doubt anyone who hasn't seen the programming would even know the difference... >_<