Fruit Explosion #1803 Remains the Lame Duck Choice

OLG Retailers were instructed to return unsold tickets for Fruit Explosion near the beginning of October. The game remains on the outstanding prize list and remains the top choice if you are lucky enough to find any. Once it is retired, the time for playing $3 games will be gone as there is no heir apparent from this group of games. There remains one Grand Prize and an estimated 210,000 unsold tickets. $0.119 of every dollar spent on the game at this point will be returned to the Grand Prize winner, if the Grand Prize is ever claimed. That is the second highest such figure at present and that is unusual for a $3 game. Your chances to win the Grand Prize are significantly better than the second such rated game (356,000:1 for Cash In). I have excluded Wild 10's from this comparison with its high number of low value Grand Prizes.


 

Top Rated Games

1. $3 Fruit Explosion #1803 - 8% of float remains; tickets should be as rare as hen's teeth.
2. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1168 - half the float has been sold and all 5 of those large Grand Prizes remain outstanding.
3. $10 Fortune #1779 - Inter-Provincial game. 10% of float sold - all 12 $Million prizes remain.
4. $10 Wild 10's #1785 - Hard to get an imbalance of unclaimed Grand Prizes with so many of them available. Still, a good game.
5. $4 Cash For Life #1161 - 2nd, 3rd, and 4th prizes all claimed. Not recommended.

Games to Avoid

1. $3 Crossword #3205 - All of the top 4 prize categories have been claimed. The most you can win is $100. Can you spell D-O-G?
2. $3 Scrabble #1799 - All of the top 4 Prize categories have been claimed. Why is the OLG flogging these games whilst retiring games with outstanding Grand Prizes?
3. $2 Crazy 8's #1765 - Horrible game. 600,000 tickets left to flog.
4. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - Devoid of Grand Prizes, and we dislike the name! Only 2,000,000 tickets left to sell to unsuspecting buyers.
5. $1 Lucky Lines #1770 - A stinker right from the day it was introduced.

$1 - $2 Game Update

$2 Cash For Life or $1 Cash Cow are the best choices.

$3 Game Update

Slim pickens once you get beyond Fruit Explosion.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Bonus Cash For Life stands out.

$10 - $20 Game Update

Fortune and Wild 10's are the best two but Cadillac and Extraordinary are both reasonable choices.

Comings and Goings

I prematurely indicated that Jacks Are Wild had been retired. It had disappeared from the outstanding prize list when I completed last week's update and now it's back. I called the OLG and they confirmed that the game remains active. Retired this past week were Win Take All and Cross Tripler #1766. Both games had Grand Prizes of $100,000 and all those Grand Prizes had been claimed. Thus, they were due for retirement as per OLG policy. Also retired was Cashingo. This is sad as it was the second top rated game for several weeks (based upon my formula) and I never had the opportunity to buy a single ticket.  
Newly released is a $2 Cash For Life game and a large Super Bingo game. There is also a new Keno game (#1415) but the game sheet has yet to be posted on the OLG site.

The $2 Cash For Life is a welcome addition to the $1 - $2 group of games. It is top heavy, as CL66 has pointed out, and it has a ticket float over twice the size of the other games in this group. The value of the Grand Prize is $67,500 (or, $100 per week for life), and its overall return rate to players is 63.79% which is 4% higher than any other game in the group. Here is the prize breakdown:

Win your $2 back - 10.0% of revenue (best in group)
Win >$2 <$100 - 48.9% (best in group)
Win $100 and < Grand Prize - .6% (3rd of 6 in group)
Win Grand Prize (10 available) - 4.3% (best in group)
Profit for OLG - 36.21% ($3,339,515)

I expect this game to be the best in its group throughout its life cycle.


Super Bingo #3017 has a large ticket float of over 10 million tickets. Its 10 Grand Prizes of $50,000 does not excite me but it is a good churn game as there are lots of smaller prizes:

Win your $3 back - 12.8% of revenue (4th of 9 in group)
Win >$3 <$100 - 50.8% of revenue (best in group)
Win $100 and < Grand Prize - 1.7% of revenue (worst in group)
Win Grand Prize (10 available) - 1.6% of revenue (7th of 9 in group)
Profit for OLG - 33.04% ($5,564,402)

Your chances to win a prize greater than the cost of the ticket is one in every 5.58 tickets and that is second best in the group.

Personal Play

Darth and I like the Bonus Cash For Life game and CL66 does not (see readers comments for previous postings). I wish that my personal experience could weigh in my favour but it does not. Eight tickets contained two winners totaling $16.  Overall, I am 3 for 22 in this game with an ROI of 23%. Not good. If I can't find any Fruit Explosion this week I think that I'll try Fortune.

In Conclusion

I called the OLG and had an interesting chat with Joel. If I have any complaint with the OLG it is certainly not with their Call Center staff. The Call Center is located in Sault Ste Marie which I expect means that they are able to attract top quality staff who stay in their positions for long periods of time as a steady government job is one worth having if you live in the north. They do a great job.

Joel informed me that when the OLG orders the end of a game the sellers are to return any unsold packages PLUS any stragglers that may be in the tray. Of course, those stragglers have been activated and the OLG is not to know when those stragglers were actually sold. Thus, sellers may or may not comply with that requirement. Further, as was pointed out in last weeks comments, sellers can wait a long time to have their accounts credited with the returns of stragglers. I can understand why that seller would prefer to simply sell the few extras that they may have on hand.

I also learned from Joel that when new games are brought on line the OLG decides what quantity to send to sellers. Thereafter, the seller can order the games he/she wants by contacting their local distributor. As such, lobbying your local seller to get the games we know are the best to play is a strategy that may be worthwhile.

Happy Halloween to all your witches and warlocks out there.


Doug