Thursday 27 December 2012

New Evaluation Method for 2013

Before I get to the content of this post, Turbo Cash remains the unblemished choice if you are buying tickets this week.

How one evaluates the various Scratch and Win games is a matter of preference. Input from readers suggests that my emphasis on the Grand Prizes is misplaced as the chances of anyone winning one are never more than minuscule. I understand what those folks are saying but surely we buy the tickets with the Grand Prize in mind to some extent.

The good thing about Scratch and Win games is that they vary in their makeup. The current recommended game is Turbo Cash. This is a $10 game with 3 - $250,000 grand prizes. By comparison, Ontario Millions contains 3 - $1,000,000 Grand Prizes for only $5. If your only consideration was the Grand Prize, you would go with Ontario Millions. But the OLG profit for Turbo Cash is 30% and for Ontario Millions 33%. How is that possible? It is because Turbo Cash contains more smaller prizes and players have a greater chance to win something (1 in every 3.13 tickets is a winner) than with Ontario Millions (1 in every 4.40 tickets is a winner). If the jackpot was your only criterion then you should be playing Lotto Max and 649. In those games the winner gets rich and everyone else is a loser.

Old Evaluation Method


During the course of the past year, the game I recommended took the percentage of grand prizes remaining and subtracted the sum of the percentage of tickets left to be sold and the house take. As an example, Turbo Cash has 100% of its grand prizes left to be claimed. It has a house advantage of 30% and 44% of its tickets left to be sold. These numbers yield a rating of +26. The Value Play used the number of $1000 prizes left to be claimed and divided that number by the number of tickets left. The result was then divided by the cost of the ticket.

New Evaluation Method


I am going to continue to use two methods but I am going to change the evaluation method. The main method will multiply the number of grand prizes left to be claimed by the amount of the grand prize. This total will then be divided by the product of the number of tickets left to be sold and the cost of the ticket.

The value play will take the total number of tickets left to be sold whose value is $100 or greater and divide that number by the product of the number of tickets left to be sold and the cost of the ticket and the chances of winning anything more than what you paid for the ticket. The OLG does not always publish the outstanding ticket information down to the $100 level. I will be asking them to do so in future.

The blog in 2013 will identify the best $1-$2, $3-$5, and $10-$20 games for each method.


Personal Play


I ended the year by making a double purchase the week before Christmas. Four Turbo Cash tickets contained 2 winners totaling $25. I ended the year cashing 38% of all of the tickets with a 63% Return on Investment. The cash rate was higher than I should have expected but I was unable to get even one good cash. My largest cash was $50 and I only had one of those.

Oshima from Ottawa reported a $20 cash this past week. Hopefully she treated her husband to Starbucks with her profit. Jay in Scarborough went crazy by investing his entire $70 profit from playing Pro-Line all year into a variety of tickets. He turned the $70 into $109. Not bad.

Happy New Year to all visitors. I'll be back next week with a clean slate and new methods.

Doug







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