I'm back from my vacation in Dubai where I can assure everyone there are no Scratch and Win tickets for sale. During my absence, Cash In got wiped out with all four of its remaining Grand Prizes being claimed.
The new top rated game is the $1 Cash for Life game but I really cannot recommend it due to the very limited sample size of top prizes that is recorded for the game. Many readers ask me where I get the figures I use when I speak to the number of tickets remaining. I estimate that number based upon the sample of tickets sold as represented by the reported top prizes. More information on this is included at the end of this entry. Although the $1 Cash For Life is the top rated game, the game only reports on the 15 total prizes that are recorded on the web site. With such a small sample, I can only state the numbers +/- 25%. That is way too much variation. Instead, I will recommend the second rated game, $2 Cash For Life. This game has 2 of its original 3 Grand Prizes left to claim and only 23% of its float left to sell +/- 2%. This is the first time since I began this blog that a $1 - $2 game has been top rated. It means that I can either get lots of tickets or save money this week. I wonder what I'll do?
Note: The Cash For Life Family is dominating the ratings at present. If you are playing the $4 version be careful to play game #1165 and not game #1161.
Tetris and a new $20 game were introduced. Tetris begins life as a mid range $3 game. Its potential will be determined by when and if its two Grand Prizes are claimed. If they remain unclaimed for some time then the game has the potential to move up the ratings.
The new $20 game is an inter-provincial game. Extraord is almost identical to $200 Million. The prizes are the same but the new game has a few more losing tickets tossed in. I find it interesting that this game has come on line. The old $20 game has been on sale for over a year and they are selling slowly. Canadians simply do not like to spend that much money on a scratch ticket. Now with two games on the market and people's propensity to choose new games over older ones, I will predict that the $200 Million game is in trouble. There are still over 7 million of these tickets left to sell and I have no idea how they will manage to sell them. It remains a better choice than the new game so if you like $20 games, feel free to help the sales for the $200 Million game.
I get into trouble when the sample size gets smaller. For example, Prestige only lists 205 top prizes. The math would suggest that the estimate for that game is +/- 7% 19 times out of 20. When I estimate its remaining float at 42%, I should more accurately state a range of 35% - 49%.
I will state these numbers with that caveat for the next little while although I'm not sure that readers wish to see that. Please post a message if you have any thoughts on the subject.
It's good to be home - where's my lucky scratching loony?
Doug
The new top rated game is the $1 Cash for Life game but I really cannot recommend it due to the very limited sample size of top prizes that is recorded for the game. Many readers ask me where I get the figures I use when I speak to the number of tickets remaining. I estimate that number based upon the sample of tickets sold as represented by the reported top prizes. More information on this is included at the end of this entry. Although the $1 Cash For Life is the top rated game, the game only reports on the 15 total prizes that are recorded on the web site. With such a small sample, I can only state the numbers +/- 25%. That is way too much variation. Instead, I will recommend the second rated game, $2 Cash For Life. This game has 2 of its original 3 Grand Prizes left to claim and only 23% of its float left to sell +/- 2%. This is the first time since I began this blog that a $1 - $2 game has been top rated. It means that I can either get lots of tickets or save money this week. I wonder what I'll do?
Top Rated Games
- Cash For Life $1 (13% of float left to sell)
- Cash For Life $2 (23%)
- Prestige (43%)
- Cash For Life $4 (45%)
- Cash For Life $10 (61%)
Note: The Cash For Life Family is dominating the ratings at present. If you are playing the $4 version be careful to play game #1165 and not game #1161.
Games to Avoid
- Cash In (15%)
- Cherry Triple (24%)
- QFG Crossword (52%)
- Fat Cat (35%)
- Blazing 7s (79%)
$1 - $2 Game Update
Either Cash for Life is a good choice. Even Red Hot 50s is a good choice for those seeking a small but frequent Grand Prize.$3 Game Update
Super Bingo continues its climb up the ratings. It is the first $3 game in some time to be rated as being playable.$4 - $5 Game Update
The Cash For Life 1165 is a good choice as is Cross Tripler 1755. If you like the Cross Tripler game, take care to play 1755 and not 1766.$10 - $20 Game Update
All the games here are a reasonable choice with the exception of Classic Gold.Comings and Goings
Monopoly was retired this past week. It had one Grand Prize left and a modest rating. It will not be missed.Tetris and a new $20 game were introduced. Tetris begins life as a mid range $3 game. Its potential will be determined by when and if its two Grand Prizes are claimed. If they remain unclaimed for some time then the game has the potential to move up the ratings.
The new $20 game is an inter-provincial game. Extraord is almost identical to $200 Million. The prizes are the same but the new game has a few more losing tickets tossed in. I find it interesting that this game has come on line. The old $20 game has been on sale for over a year and they are selling slowly. Canadians simply do not like to spend that much money on a scratch ticket. Now with two games on the market and people's propensity to choose new games over older ones, I will predict that the $200 Million game is in trouble. There are still over 7 million of these tickets left to sell and I have no idea how they will manage to sell them. It remains a better choice than the new game so if you like $20 games, feel free to help the sales for the $200 Million game.
Personal Play
A mixed bag of tickets a few weeks back contained a $25 Cash In winner plus some smaller prizes. I am now cashing at a rate of 33% and my ROI is 65%.Other Comments
I want to clarify to readers how I estimate the size of ticket floats remaining for various games. I know the size of the initial float from the game sheet. I then assume that the number of top prizes claimed, as indicated on the outstanding prize chart, is a representative sample of the entire game. For example, the $2 CFL game began play with 2154 top prizes being listed on the OLG site. At present, 500 remain. That is 23.2% of those prizes. I project that sample across the entire game. Therefore, because the game began play with 3,060,00 tickets I would estimate that 710,000 remain to be sold. How accurate is that sample? There is math available to work this out. In this case, it is accurate to +/- 2%, 19 times out of twenty.I get into trouble when the sample size gets smaller. For example, Prestige only lists 205 top prizes. The math would suggest that the estimate for that game is +/- 7% 19 times out of 20. When I estimate its remaining float at 42%, I should more accurately state a range of 35% - 49%.
I will state these numbers with that caveat for the next little while although I'm not sure that readers wish to see that. Please post a message if you have any thoughts on the subject.
It's good to be home - where's my lucky scratching loony?
Doug
The Poker Lotto all in jackpot is looking good! It's currently at a record breaking $197,000 and climbing! For $3 and a chance to win $200,000 instantly on the spot and $100,000 in the nightly draw it's an good game to play!
ReplyDeleteHi Doug
ReplyDeleteWelcome back, were you in Dubai on business or pleasure? I would love to move there one day, you can't beat the weather that's for sure...Its nice to see you have a lot more followers as well and I always tell people about your blog when I'm at a convenience store. I really haven't purchased any scratch tickets in awhile and if I ever do I always come here to find out what to buy 1st. One of your other followers plays the Poker and that's usually what I play and Ontario 49..I won 500.00 in March on Ontario 49 and play 25 dollars....Yeah..
Good luck to all this week.
Thanks for the message. My daughter lives in Dubai. She works for Emirates. This was my third time there to see her. It is a very interesting place but even she says that the summers can be oppressively hot.
DeleteSorry Doug, I posted the Anonymous comment above...lol
ReplyDeleteVic mentioned that OLG will have there own online casino but unless you can play with a live dealer it's totally rigged, RNG you just can't beat more then you loose usually. I played online Roulette and Craps for years RNG style and I always lost more then I won, but when I started playing with the Live Dealers in the UK that was a different story all together and I was actually cashing out, so please play safe...just my thoughts to everyone. Ok Doug sorry I got so off topic. lol
Have a great day.
Shell
Ontario 49 is going up to $1.oo in May I think the top prize is going to 2million - less reason to play 6/49 ... for tickets outstanding I usually look at the largest small prizes to be won - I think $2 CFL has about 2000 $100 prizes 500 remain so 25% of a float left makes sense
ReplyDeleteYou have outlined the method that I use. It's all we have to go on and it is mathematically sound if you believe that top prize tickets are distributed randomly. I do.
DeleteDoug
DeletePlease let us know how you do on Poker, I've always liked that game and I usually play about 18.00 a day the most I've won on it is 175.00.
the poker lotto jackpot all in amount is the highest its ever been guys. i already played 20 bux today on it but lost. its at like 205 k currently and goin up. looks pretty good to me
ReplyDeleteHey Vic
DeleteSo how do you play your poker tickets? I usually buy 6 or 9 all together instead of 1 line at a time, care to share how you play?
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deleteyeah shelly, when i play poker all in, i would play 6 or 9 dollars for 2 or 3 hands on the same ticket, just like you do. i rarely buy 3 dollar tickets and play each ticket per hand. best of luck to u all
Delete@shelly, ill probably still play their online games. like slots and stuff for fun, i would defiantly think that playing against a computer based dealer wouldnt be quite rewarding, so I'm thinking bout just giving the penny slots a go once an a while when they're site goes live
ReplyDeleteThanks Vic. I'm going to take a shot at the Poker Lotto tomorrow.
DeleteHi Vic
DeleteLets us know when it goes live it should be interesting the only good thing is you can play with Canadian Money instead of US money and our dollar is way down right now...Good luck on your poker I may have to go and buy some more its up too 219,000 I think when I bought some tickets. Maybe we can get Doug on board. It's too bad syndicates are illegal here...
will do. I contacted the admins of playolg.ca , they said the site will go live sometime this year, but no specific time was given yet.
DeleteThe main reason why I'm really happy to see Major lottery corps imbed their own legitimate way of online gambling. If you think of it. They will be sucking out tremendous business to all the North American Third party online casino users. For example. most players who play at 888casino, or those shady third party sites, will most likely transfer to their provincial online gambling that is ruined by their own government, meaning that you most likely won't have to wait months upon months like those other companies to get paid out of your winnings.
lemme know what you guys think about this topic. thanks and best of luck to everyone
NESTOR FALLS ON QFGCROSSWORD 3204 $5,000.00
ReplyDeleteThere's approximately a 1-in-2 million chance of winning this prize and it shows up in a town of 720 (Census 2011, Wikipedia).
GERALDTON ON WILD 10S 1745 $10,000.00
Greenstone (Canada 2011 Census with a total population of 4,724) (Census 2011, Wikipedia)
Although the distribution of top prizes may indeed be random, I find it odd the number of large prizes being won in towns/places with very low populations with respect to, say, the GTA.
Comments welcome.
Anonymous,
DeleteYou are on to something that is of interest to me. It's not fair to ask about Nestor Falls or Geraldton in isolation of all the small communities that exist in Ontario. What would be of interest is to know whether the GTA receives its fair share of winners as it accounts for over a third of all tickets sold.
I previously obtained sales figures for Scratch and Win tickets broken down by census metropolitan area. The OLG maintains these numbers. I also have recorded the locations of all winners of $10,000 or more on Scratch and Win tickets over a six month period. What's left for me to do is to align the numbers to see if I can detect any pattern.
I, like you, am somewhat suspicious that although the production of tickets is random on a ticket by ticket basis, it remains possible that winning tickets are sent to rural areas at a greater proportion than urban areas. This helps the OLG to market their products.
Of course, this would be scandalous if it were true so I would have to really see a strong pattern for me to think that is the case. It's a project for me.
Doug
The OLG winners list shows your home town not where you buy the ticket. So if you buy a winner in Toronto and live in Gormley you will be listed as a Gormley winner. North York, East York, York, Weston, Scarborough and Etobikoke are all part of Toronto but are always listed separately. I think they do this so that it doesn't look like all the winners come from big cities.
DeleteThanks for the replies, guys.
DeleteLloyd, good point although most of the time I would think that most people buy tickets within their 'comfort zone', basically pretty much near where they live.
Doug, I agree. Scandalous, if true. Would be interesting to see your project's ultimate result. Great blog! Thanks for the work you do and the information you provide!
damn, olg is really racking up the jackpot for this one, its at almost 250k, so i recommend all players to go all in when playing poker lotto for now. good luck
ReplyDeleteHi Doug,
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what method you use to determine which games should be top ranked?? From the percents given, I can't really see a pattern? For example, Cash for Life $1 has 13% float left and is ranked number 1 whereas Cash In has 15% and is ranked as a game to avoid. Thank you for some insight :)
Ian,
DeleteAt present, I take four different factors into consideration when evaluating the games:
1. The Total Grand Prize money remaining divided by the number of tickets left to be sold.
2. The chances of winning a prize greater than the cost of the ticket.
3. The percentage of Grand Prizes left to be claimed.
4. The overall percentage of total revenue returned to players.
Whether I add additional factors or whether I change the weight of the factors than I am using will affect the ratings. I’m always looking at tinkering with how I do it. I’ve been using the same formula since January 2013. I’ve been considering using the total percentage of prize money listed on the OLG site as a percentage of the total money available at the outset of the game but that would require significantly more calculating for me and I’m not sure exactly how much more accuracy I will get for the effort.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Doug
all cash ins top prizes are claimed
ReplyDeleteVic,
DeleteYes. That game went from the penthouse to the out house over the course of two weeks. I should check to see if any winners were located in Ottawa.
Doug
Might be located around town here somewhere, but definitely not in my pile that I purchased Wednesday!
DeleteDoug,
ReplyDeleteWelcome back!
purchased a Blazing 7's for $2.00 and got a return of $27.00, not bad.
ReplyDeleteJust scratched my 3rd Tetris since they came out and won $18.00! Not that bad :)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to get 7 more of them with my winnings and see how far that takes me lol.
If were to play I will choose 12BET online bingo game. It is one of the best and fun game for me.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete