Lottario Trial Summary

The eleventh and final week was a miss. I hit the key numbers 18 times and the Bonus number twice. The 18 main numbers produced five lines with two numbers, eight with one, and seven with no numbers. The bonus number hit one of the zeros yielding one free ticket which turned into nothing the following week.

The carry over jackpot was hit three times yielding a payoff of $241,067 which is less than one would win by hitting the jackpot without a carry-over by oneself. I wonder if being that lucky still results in cursing your luck to have to split the prize three ways?

My estimation is that the total sales for the carry-over was roughly 40% higher than when there is no carry-over. Given that Lottario is a minor game for OLG, there must be quite a few people who must be playing games only with carry-overs. That's a smart strategy.

The last annual report from the OLG explained, in part, its failure to meet its revenue targets by the fact that there were a low number of carry-over Lotto Max jackpots. When that pot grows so do the numbers of sales - exponentially. There must be lots of groups who sit on the sidelines waiting for carry-over jackpots and they make their plays only on those draws.

Trial Results

I played 222 lines in total. From that total I won $5 once, $4 - 5 times, and a free play 13 times. Twelve of those were used to reduce my cost for the next week. Therefore, my total return was $37 from $111 played or 33%.

Based upon actual odds, the expected return was 13.6 Free Plays, 4.5 lines with 3 correct ($4), and .4 lines with 3 correct plus the bonus ($5) and a .3 percent chance of winning $10 for having four correct. Nothing else had any significant chance. The total projected return was therefore $37. I came out exactly where I expected to be.

These games produce an overall lower return than scratch tickets due to the nature of the game. Any lotto game includes an oversized jackpot. If you don't win it, it is very hard to meet the expected return.

My next trial is going to be Ontario 49. I'm curious to see how it compares to Lottario.

Scratch Tickets

Recommended Games: $3 Bingo 3028, $4 Cash For Life 1174, $5 Cross Tripler 2092, $5 The Big Spin 2109.

Games to Avoid: $3 Crossword 3223, $20 Monopoly 2112.

The $20 Monopoly game is run on an interprovincial basis. 25% of the tickets remain outstanding and there are zero grand prizes left to claim. Be smart!


OLG Modernization

I am not a big fan of the Sunshine List. When it came into being only a small number of people were earning over $100,000. Nowadays teachers and police officers flood the list. The qualifying number should be increased.

Regardless, the OLG has 416 people on the list. It had 418 last year and 411 the year before. Of those people, 23 earned in excess of $200,000. I'd love to know what all these folks do. The OLG has divested itself of all its casinos and slot palaces. It has handed all of the monies going to horse racing to the Woodbine Entertainment Group, and it is trying to offload its lotto sales to a third party. What exactly will there be left for anyone to do? We know that the folks who were never going to meet Sunshine threshold were packaged off to the new casino owners who had to promise to pay its new employees the same way they had been paid. That allowed the OLG to distance itself from the bloodletting that is coming. But it appears that the high end folks are heretofore safely ensconced.

Congrats go to Stephen Rigby who finally earned more than Rod Phillips managed to pull down as the CEO at OLG. Rigby earned $765,000 which would be 2-3 times what he was paid as the President of the Canada Border Services Agency. Rod Phillips, whose career path took him from Chief of Staff for the Mayor of Toronto, to the OLG where his mentor (Paul Godfrey) circumvented the Government's edict to freeze senior provincial officials salary by awarding him an annual bonus that effectively doubled his income. Phillips then followed Godfrey to the National Post where the pair of them oversaw very painful staff reductions. Bonuses well earned no doubt. Rod is now Ontario's Minister of the Environment. His time is now spent sniping at his federal counterpart while fleshing out his plan for how Ontario is going to meet its targets for CO2 emissions. He likely earns less than half of what he earned at the helm of the OLG for doing a job that will impact all Ontarians for the next millennium. Nice to be an insider.



Doug