Prestige Maintains Its Secrets

Prestige is in a holding pattern as its sales are languishing. The result is that it remains the top pick. A meager 3% of its float has been sold since late October. As you would expect, low sales equals few Grand Prizes being revealed. Eleven of the twelve Grand Prizes remain to be claimed and a little more than two thirds of the tickets remain to be sold. This is an Inter-provincial Lottery Corporation game which means that I'm not sure how long they will continue to pursue an unpopular game. Prestige is not alone as $200 Million and Classic White are also slow sellers. Maybe the buying public has a significant resistance to spending $10 on a scratch and win ticket. Next week I'll prepare a chart for the active games indicating how many tickets each game has sold over the past month. But for now, Prestige remains the top pick.

Top Rated Games

1. Prestige (67%)
2. Money Multiplier (36%)
3. Fast 200s (27%)
4. $200 Million (59%)
5. Classic White (11%)

Games to Avoid

1. Cash for Life 1162 (30%)
2. Cashingo (18%)
3. Keno 1410 (18%)
4. Horse Shoes (12%)
5. Crossword 3203 (11%)

If you're buying $3 games, take care! All of the above games are devoid of Grand Prizes and four of them are $3 games.

I'm sad to see Cashingo fall "below the line". It was a popular game and rated highly but its last Grand Prize was revealed this week making it the newest of the lame duck games.

$1 - $2 Game Update

Apart from Fast 200's, which is a game with many small Grand Prizes, Wild 8's is the best choice.

$3 Games

Frogger is the top choice here but be careful - there is only one Grand Prize left to be claimed.

$4 - $5 Games

Money Multiplier is a very good choice and it is flying under the radar. If you don't want to shell out $10 or $20 for a ticket, this is the choice.

$10 - $20 Games

Prestige is rated to be so much better than the other three games that I can't justify steering you elsewhere.

Comings and Goings

I was surprised to see a new game this week after the roll-out of the Christmas games. Fat Cat is a $2 game that has potential. Almost 5% of the revenue is returned to players who win $100 or more. That is second only to Fast 200s in the $1-$2 game category.

Personal Play

Four Prestige tickets began with a bang as the first one was worth $50! The remaining three were all losers. My year to date return on investment is now 74% and I have cashed on 38% of tickets this year.

Thanks to readers who posted messages this past week. I always enjoy hearing what you have to say and I'm sure that is also true for other readers.

Lotto Max

Here is my little essay on Lotto Max. Instant Game players are on one end of the spectrum - Lotto Max players are on the other end.

My office has the habit of creating a lottery pool every time the Lotto Max reaches $50 million. Everyone contributes $5 to the cause. I suspect that the main reason most people play is the fear that the others will win. The organizer does a great job of collecting the money, having people sign the group sheet, and providing everyone with the numbers in advance of the draw.

For the last big draw, there were 36 participants. With three lines per play, we had 168 lines in play. The results --- four free tickets! Based on the published odds, we should have reasonably expected to have won $20 once and picked up 7 free tickets. We had one chance in 80 to get five numbers right. Had we been so lucky we would have won $130 for our $180 investment. One of our free tickets won another free ticket to Friday’s draw so it required one additional week to wipe us out.

The bottom line is that games like Lotto Max are essentially winner take all propositions. The Interprovincial Lottery Corporation takes $.52 out of every $1.00 spent for its share of the pie. Once the free plays and $20 prizes are deducted from the $.48 that the lottery chaps put into play, 87% goes to the jackpot winner. In other words, the winner of Lotto Max wins over 40% of all the money spent on tickets. Compare that to Instant Games where the lottery gods take about one third of the money and the Grand Prize winners generally split, depending upon the number of grand prize winners, less than 10% of the revenue generated by the game.

One other minor complaint that I have about Lotto Max is that when the pot exceeds $50 million, the lottery corporation offers a series of single line winning numbers, each one worth $1 million. It is extremely difficult to verify 168 lines of seven numbers against a series of 20 - $1 million lines of numbers. The result is that people are left checking their tickets at machines to see if they won. I don’t like that – I want to know that my ticket is a winner (or a loser) before I check it.

Lotto Max has a large audience of people taking their fling at a monstrous prize. As for me, I prefer scratching my tickets and getting maximum action for my dollar. I'm prepared to pay the cost of not being able to win a monster prize. It’s a matter of preference. 

Hats off to the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. They were deserving winners.

Doug