Friday 12 July 2013

Wild 10s Stays on Top - For Now

Wild 10s retained its position over the past week. Fifteen of the $10,000 Grand Prizes were claimed last week from the 60,000 tickets sold. Your odds to win one of the remaining 59 Grand Prizes are 8,000:1.

I have been looking at my evaluation method and I have concluded that it needs to be tweaked. Any game that devotes more of its total revenue to the Grand Prize does very well based upon the existing rating method. That fact is important but I think that I am providing too much weight for it. This is not to say that the games that I have been recommending have been poor, it just means that I need a little more balance in the formula. I will change it this week and report on the details of that change in next week's blog.

WILD 10s

Best Overall Rated Games


  1. Wild 10's
  2. Double Cash For Life (Game 1162)
  3. $200 Million
  4. Fast 200's
  5. Texas Hold'Em


Fast 200's is a prime example of my need to re-calibrate the formula. It is a new game with a heavy weighting towards the Grand Prize(s). This makes the game one to watch but, in my opinion, it should not be the 4th rated game before selling any tickets.

Games to Avoid


  • Quest For Gold Crossword (5%)
  • Tetris (13%)
  • Cash for Life (71%) (Game 1159)


I have included the estimated percentage of the ticket float remaining for each of these games. I always find what the OLG does in this area to be disconcerting. Most games are retired when the float drops down below 20%. Quest For Gold Crossword and Tetris are both well below this number but the OLG continues to flog these tickets. Cash for Life has the misfortune to have revealed all three of its Grand Prizes early in its life cycle. Lets see how long this game remains in play. The OLG policy is to retire games where the Grand Prize is $100,000 or more once all the Grand Prizes have been claimed. That should be the case here as the Net Present Value of the Grand Prize for this game is greater than $100,000.

$1 - $2 Game Update

Two new games were introduced this week. Fast 200's looks good. It is one of the games like Pick 3 and Wild 10's where there are lots of Grand Prizes but the Grand Prizes are small. In this case, it is only $200 but there are 3909 to be won.

$3 Game Update

Texas Hold'Em is the best game in this group by a significant margin.

$4 - $5 Games

The Cash For Life Games are always popular. We currently have a very good one and a very bad one. Be careful - play Double Cash For Life.

$10 - $20 Games

Although Wild 10's is our top rated game, none is poor in this category.


Comings and Goings

Cross Express is a new $1 game. Note that apart from the 4 - $10,000 Grand Prizes, there are no prizes available of $100 or more. The ratio of tickets that return your $1 is low, which is a positive. Your chances to win any prize is second best for the $1 - $2 Games.

Fast 200's is a good game with lots of $200 Prizes. If it's action you want rather than a big prize, play away.

A new Bingo (Game 3009) has surprisingly been introduced. I say surprising as the existing game (Game 3008) is in mid-life. The two games are very similar in structure but if you wish to play this game, play the new one.

Personal Play


I'm streaking downwards fast! Last week was my first shut out of the year. I followed that up with another shut out this week. My cash rate is now down to 37% and my Return on Investment to 75%. This is getting serious.

There is only a 3% chance of having eight consecutive losers in Wild 10's. I often wonder why my bad luck is routinely more dramatic than my good luck. A reader once asked me if there is any advantage to where the tickets are in a strip. I did not quite understand the question but now I do. The seller last week opened a new package of tickets and peeled my four off the back of the strip. The same thing happened today although I have yet to scratch my tickets for this week. The answer to the readers questions must be "NO", but who knows really? These tickets are produced by computer programs with random number generators. Who's to say that there have never been quirks in the "fail proof" system. It's not like it has never happened before! http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/

Play safe.

Doug






2 comments:

  1. Yea Wild 10's is very strange like that, I usually buy at least 5 and they have been several times where I would not win anything. I bought 10 and only won once ($20) before and then on the next set I bought I won $100 on the first ticket to make up for the last one.

    Anyway double cash for life is a useless game to me now it has already sold 2 of its top 4 prizes and there are still millions of tickets to be sold and one of the winning tickets was sold in my city

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  2. I had my first positive return on CFL this week. 5 tickets returned $30. I promptly bought a 200 million and got a dud.

    With 2 CFL winners out, I think I will slow down on that one as well for a few weeks. I think next week I will split between wild 10s and wpt poker.

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