Scrabble #1835 Overtakes 15X The Money - Both Games Near Their End Dates

Scrabble #1835, with only 14% of its float left (+/- 3%) has taken over from 15X The Money which has 12% of its float left (+/- 3%). I have given up on 15X The Money and Scrabble is becoming progressively more rare in my neighborhood.

Each game has an identical outstanding Top Prize ratio of 1.69. 15X The Money has 260 prizes of $100 or more left and 20% of the money associated with those prizes. Scrabble has 197 such prizes representing 25% of the prize money. Scrabble offers a .9% higher small prize return ratio and its that difference that makes the difference between the two. Your chances to find the 15 X Money Grand Prize are 1 in 380,000 whereas they are 1 in 450,000 for Scrabble. Both games should be gone before too long.


  

Top Rated Games

1. $3 Scrabble #1835 - New Leader
2. $3 15X The Money #1840 - limping into the great beyond. 
3. $3 Crossword #3209 - Strong candidate to head the list soon. 
4. $3 Super Bingo #3018 - Takes a long time to lose my $3. 
5. $1 Bingo Express #1823 - Cheat the parking meter and pick one up. 

Games To Avoid

1. $1 5X The Money #1838 - If it's the only ticket for sale - leave it. 
2. $5 500 Frenzy #1838 - Three blog contributors have snagged a $500 prize. That's a first!
3. $2 Fast 200's #1817 - 800 to 1 to win $200 versus 550 to 1 to win $500 for Frenzy. 
4. $3 Tetris #1832 - My seller still has some - no thanks. 
5. $2 10X The Money #1839 - Bad all around.

Games to Play If All You Want Is A Grand Prize

1. Frenzy
2. Fast 200's
3. Extreme
4. Cash Blast
5. 15X The Money

Games Devoid of Grand Prizes

• 5X The Money
• Tetris
• Crystal 7's

Comings and Goings

Nothing to report this week although my update is as of yesterday and I note that CL66 has posted a review for the new game "Wild Card". See last weeks post for the details.

Personal Play

Eight Super Bingos and four Scrabbles returned two winners totaling $9. I am in a bad rut and I'm thinking of breaking out by reaching down my list a ways. You have to like the games you're playing and I don't like Super Bingo at all. Maybe some Cross Triplers or Classic Whites are in order.

Post Script

Some good advice has been posted this past week by Tommy and JayDee.

Lots of discussion over the location of winners and whether things may not be as they appear. I have to preface my comments with the statement that seeing patterns is an ability that has contributed to the evolutionary success of our species. Seeing patterns that are not there does not necessarily hurt us but being right certainly helps.

A while back I set out to collect the data as to where winning scratch tickets were sold. I abandoned the mission mid-stream. There is too much information that is needed to make the project reasonable in scope. The OLG arrays sales data by Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). If we knew, over a substantial period of time, what the sales data was for Scratch tickets and we knew the Grand Prize distribution then we could start to form some conclusions about whether what we are seeing is reasonable. We have to remember that although a winner may come from a small town that there are many many small towns out there and only one Toronto. Like Tommy, I'm not convinced that it is true but I am also not 100% sure that it is not. I am confident that there is no direct finagling but it is possible that winning tickets are randomly produced and delivered to particular CMAs to ensure that all parts of the province get to share in the thoughts that they too could win. The OLG might call that a Marketing Strategy.

The proof of this would be in the contract the OLG signs with the ticket producer but I have no doubt that such details are protected from Freedom Of Information legislation as being counter to the financial interests of the Province of Ontario. The truth will become all the more opaque when the OLG contracts out the entire Scratch Ticket business to a third party.

I chuckled at the lament from one poster who longed for the days where the numbers came out of a machine with balls. Take a look at this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DxUvX5tsqY . An axiom when I was young was , "Don't believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. ". That should be updated to "Don't believe anything you hear or see!"

I'm still trying to figure out who owns the 49% of the company that has been awarded the Ontario East Gaming bundle. There has been a flurry of activity with the CEO of the Great Canadian Gaming Company (owner of the company that won the bid) phoning the Mayor of Belleville. The winning company has ideas around location and the Mayor has three possible sites but the OLG has been very clear in saying that nothing has been decided as of yet. Belleville may find that what the "civic minded" casino company has in mind may not correspond with what the democratically elected representatives of the good people of Belleville have envisioned. More to come....


Doug