Cash for Life $10 Loses a Grand Prize - Emerald 7's Takes Over Top Spot

The good and bad news with a game like the $10 Cash for Life Family is that it has a small number of large grand prizes. With a $2,025,000 Grand Prize the game was steaming along on top of my ratings. And then the bad news happened. Victor Ashun-Quainoo of Brampton took down one of the three grand prizes. Good for him – bad for the rest of us. The game has been knocked down from top status to middling status. It may be able to return to favoured status in time but for now we have to look elsewhere.

And that elsewhere is Emerald 7’s. This game has five of its seven grand prizes left to be claimed along with one of its two second prizes and only 30% of its float left to sell. The game is average within its group in terms of chances to win a prize. Its grand prize rating is not great as the grand prize is only $77,777 for your $5 ticket but it has lots of prizes between $100 and the grand prize amount. It also offers a low number of “winning” tickets that return the cost of the ticket. I like that. Your chances to win one of the grand prizes currently stand at 190,000:1 and that is the best of any game currently for sale.

$1 - $2 Game Update

The $2 Cash For Life Family game is creeping back up the ladder after surrendering an early grand prize. It is an excellent choice for an inexpensive game.

$3 Game Update

There is still more bad news than good news in this area. At present, the best rated game is Super Bingo #3013.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Emerald 7’s is the game of choice but Cash In is also a good choice. Cross-Tripler is the only poor choice in this area.

$10 - $20 Game Update

Avoid Classic Gold. You can play any of the others, including the $10 Cash for Life Family. That game has taken a hit but it’s still not a poor choice.

Comings and Goings

The OLG retired Money Multiplier and Black Pearls this past week. We were happy to see Black Pearls go as all the grand prizes had been claimed and with a $100,000 grand prize, it was the OLG’s policy to retire the game. Money Multiplier was another story. That game would be top rated if it was still in play. It had two $100,000 grand prizes left and only 13% of its float left to sell. That still amounts to 400,000 tickets somewhere in the system. I fail to understand why the OLG would not want to continue to sell the game. Or maybe I do understand all too well. 

The sobering reality of playing any of these games was reinforced by a poster who recounts that he found 12 Money Multipliers, bought them all, and managed a total return of $15 for his efforts. That would be enough to turn me off the game.  

Personal Play

Two Cash for Life $10 tickets were purchased this past week. Both were winners returning $25 in total. I know – nothing to shout about but it is my first winning week of 2014 so I’m patting myself on the back regardless.

I’ll be buying a Lotto Max ticket this week. A $50 million jackpot and twenty $1 million supplementary prizes is sufficient to drag me in based upon the wisdom of a reader comment of a few months ago. With three lines in play, and barring duplicate winners, I have 21 chances of 24 million:1 to snag one of the prizes.  As mentioned before, this is a “winners take all” sort of lottery. As an illustration, the chances of getting 4 or seven numbers on one line are a little over 70:1. The payoff for doing so is 3:1. Those kinds of odds will empty your pockets in a hurry. On the other hand, a 1.2 million to one shot to win $1 million (or maybe $50 million) for my $5 is worth the investment.

Best of luck to all.

Doug