Scrabble Loses Its Last Grand Prize - Fruit Explosion #1803 New Top Choice

I was on my way home from playing tennis this past week when I stopped off at a store I never frequent to pick up some milk. And what to my wondering eyes did appear but six shiny Scrabble tickets. I scooped them up, charged home, only to find that they contained one lonely winner of $5. To make matters worse, the final Grand Prize was claimed the next day at a store a mere two kilometers from where I live. I guess I need to find new tennis courts to play on.

The loss of Scrabble brings Fruit Explosion to the top of the rankings. This is a game with one Grand Prize left to claim plus some outstanding secondary prizes. Only 12% of the float remains to be claimed (+/- 2%) , which means that they are likely hard to find. Your chance to find that last ticket is 310,000:1. It pays to ask the retailer before you buy if that prize remains outstanding. Your chances to win any prize in this game is 1 in every 3.62 tickets and to win a prize greater than the $3 cost of the ticket are 1 in every 6.81 tickets. These are average. The one good thing about the game is that it is relatively rich in prizes of $100 or more but less than the Grand Prize. The game offers 4.4% of total revenue in this area and that is best for any $3 game and fourth overall trailing only Cadillac Riches, Win Take All, and Jacks Are Wild.

    

Top Rated Games

1. $3 Fruit Explosion #1803 - Only 12% of float left. Tickets may be scarce.
2. $3 Cashingo #1801 - Good second choice; only 14% of float left. 
3. $4 Bonus CFL #1168 - People having worse luck with this game than expected - including me!
4. $10 Fortune #1779 - Unusually low number of prizes worth the cost of the ticket. 
5. $3 Crossword #3205 - Quirky result. I would recommend avoiding this game. 

Games to Avoid

1. $3 Scrabble #1799 - Penthouse to outhouse. Only two prizes of more than $300 left. 
2. $2 Crazy 8's #1765 - Not terrible but all six Grand Prizes are gone. Avoid. 
3. $5 Win Take All #1800 - This game should be retired but 20% of float remains. Watching.
4. $5 Jacks Are Wild #1787 - Only one of seven Grand Prizes remain and 40% of float. 
5. $1 Lucky Lines #1770 - Stinky game but what can one expect for a $1 game?

$1 - $2 Game Update

Cash Cow and Royal 7's are each reasonable choices.

$3 Game Update

Three of the top five games are in this group. Not long ago there were none. The only poor choice is Scrabble.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Either Cash For Life is a reasonable choice but posters have reported awful results for these games. I have experienced poor results as well. Next best is Black Pearls.

$10 - $20 Game Update

You can play any of the games.

Comings and Goings

Prestige was retired this past week. This was an Inter-provincial game that had been on sale for fourteen months. That is a long time for a scratch game. They still had 23% of the float left to sell and 3 of the 12 Grand Prizes of $1 million left to be revealed. Can't find fault with the decision but it shows again how $10 games are a little rich for most players.

Cash In #1807 was launched this week. It is a fairly typical $5 game. Your chance to win a prize is 1 in every 4.13 tickets (7th of 8 in group) and 1 in every 7.42 to win more than $5 (5th of 8 in group). The game does offer a good array of prizes from $100 up, as you would expect with the numbers cited in the previous sentence. One problem is that one of the seven Grand Prizes has already been claimed. We'll have to wait to see if this game works its way onto my radar.

Prize Breakdown: 10.7% To Winners of Cost of Ticket; 47.9% to winners of more than cost of ticket and less than $100; 2.8% to winners of $100 and less than Grand Prize; 5.4% to Grand Prize winners.

Personal Play

Eight Bonus Cash For Life's contained one winner of $4 and six Scrabble's contained one winner of $5. My poor results have reduced my YTD return to 63% per dollar "invested". Time to get something going.

In Conclusion

To the poster who inquired about how the remaining float size is calculated, the formula is:

Initial Float (from game sheet on OLG site) X (Total Top Prizes Remaining Listed on Web Site/Total Top Prizes at outset of game as listed on the OLG Web Site).

You must remember that because we are estimating based upon a sample, the sample size contains a margin of error. A game with 10,000 listed top prizes will have a margin of error of +/- 1%, 19 times in 20. A game with 125 listed prizes would have a margin of error of +/- 8%, 19 times in 20.

I have put into use a new evaluation formula beginning this week. The formula is the product of three factors:

1. A weighted sum of prizes: 1 x % of revenue paid to tickets that win the cost of ticket, plus
                                               2 x % of revenue paid to tickets of more than cost and <$100, plus
                                               3 x % of revenue paid to tickets of >$100 and <Grand Prize, plus
                                               4 x % of revenue paid to Grand Prize winners.

This formula yields more weight to games that award more money to bigger prizes. The game with the top number according to this factor is Wild 10's with 153.3. The lowest is Lucky Lines at 109.8.

2. The ratio of percentage of Grand Prizes left divided by Total Top prizes listed. The greater the imbalance, the better for the formula. At present, the top rated game is Fruit Explosion at 2.76. One of three Grand Prizes remain and 218 of 1804 Top Prizes remain.

3. The inversion of the odds to win a prize greater than the cost of the ticket. The more likely, the better. The best game in play according to this factor is Extraordinary with 1 ticket in every 4.30 worth more than the cost of the ticket. The worst is Win Take All with one winner in every 8.63 tickets.

I multiply each factor together to get the rating. Fruit Explosion, the top rated game is rated at:

127.1 * 2.76 * (1/6.81) = 51.4


That's enough math - I'm even boring myself writing about it.

Enjoy the good weather - scratch your tickets outside.

Doug