Wednesday 17 December 2014

Bonus Cash For Life #1168 Listing But Stays On Top

Sorry about my late post. Unexpected family responsibilities took me out of town for several days. Two weeks and a day since the last update but not much has changed. The top rated game lost a Grand Prize to a lucky player in Fergus but three of the original five Grand Prizes remain outstanding with only 30% of the float remaining. Your chances to snag one are 1:980,000 for $4. Seventeen cents of every dollar spent on the game will go to those three as yet undetermined winners.

This game, like all CFL games, has the lowest amount of prizes of less than $100 in its group. That is the trade off and several posters have reported bad luck on the game. I have experienced the same but those three Grand Prizes still look juicy and, in my opinion, are worth the trade-off.


 BONUS CASH FOR LIFE

The image on the ticket also looks mighty pleasing given our weather of late.....


Top Rated Games


  1. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1168 - Good bang for your playing dollar. 
  2. $10 Fortune #1779 - IPL game is quietly working its way up. Ten $1 m prizes left. 
  3. $10 Wild 10's #1785 - bored with this one? Still has good value and 22-$10,000 prizes left. 
  4. $20 Extraordinary #1742 - lots of ads on TV for this one. Will they produce sales?
  5. $10 Holiday Spectacular #1816 - Best Christmas game available. 


Games to Avoid


  1. $3 Crossword #3206 - Only 9% of float left. Buy #3207, if you must play this game. 
  2. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - Disgraceful. 
  3. $1 Lucky Lines #1770 - a dog since it arrived on the scene. 
  4. $2 Royal 7's #1790 - Nothing to like. 
  5. $3 Scrabble #1821 - 1 of 3 Grand Prizes left and well over 2 million tickets left to sell. 


$1 - $2 Game Update

Holiday Cashout is the best choice and you're getting a free ticket with every Holiday Pack. Tempting...

$3 Game Update

Keno #1414 and Horseshoes #1806 are the top two picks in this group.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Bonus Cash for Life is the top pick, Black Pearls would be the next best choice.

$10- - $20 Game Update

You can find justification to play any game in this group. I rate Cadillac Riches as the poorest of the group but it is still 10th overall and CL66 rates it as the best game. The only question you have to ask yourself is whether you can mentally withstand a losing streak when buying $10 tickets?


Comings and Goings

The premature retirement announcement for Jacks Are Wild has now become a reality. All Grand Prizes were gone, In fact, the OLG was slow on the trigger retiring this game. Tough to pull the trigger, OLG,  once the Grand Prizes are gone. I understand.

New on the scene is $1 Cross Express #1811. This is a straightforward game. There are four $10,000 Grand Prizes and a good availability of smaller prizes. The trade off is that there are no prizes between $50 and $10,000. Still, a reader picked up a bunch as he is of the view that it has the highest chance of any game to double your money. I have not worked out those numbers for every game but he may well be right. Of course, that means a $2 cash in this case.


Personal Play

Two Gift Packs returned nothing. Two Bonus Cash for Life tickets were each a winner returning $24.

My year-to-date cash rate stands at 30% and my ROI at 59%. I'd like to nudge that up to at least 60% over the next two weeks.


In Conclusion


A couple of articles caught my attention:

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/11/19/b-c-lottery-pulls-dragon-fever-slot-machine-after-it-dishes-out-100000-prize-due-to-malfunction/

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/50m-lotto-max-ticket-hidden-144925628.html

The second one reminds us that if you are in an office pool you should always have a signed document and be provided with a copy of all tickets for every draw. Don't be trusting. Sad.

A reader also has asked me to ask visitors what they use to scratch tickets with. A loony, a quarter, a lucky penny, a key chain? Post what you use to the reader comments. I like the idea of a lucky penny but I can never find it! Most often I use a loony.


Best


Doug










Tuesday 2 December 2014

Bonus Cash For Life #1168 Rolls Along

Bonus Cash for Life burned through 50,000 tickets last week without losing a Grand Prize. The game is the clear leader in the evaluation system based upon 4 Grand Prizes of $675,000. Nine of the game's second prizes of $100,000 have been claimed, which is not good. Going lower down the top prizes, the percentage of claimed prizes falls roughly into where one would think is normal. At present, $.191 of every dollar spent on the game goes to the four Grand Prize winners. At the same time, 56.5% of the revenue for the game is returned to winners of less than $100. The main feature of this game is the extra 5% return offered on a $4 game from what one would expect. At this stage, the game could incur the loss of a Grand Prize and remain on top of the ratings.

Anyone playing this game must stay away from its plain vanilla version #1168. As Darth has indicated in one of his posts, these tickets have not been seen for some time yet apparently, the OLG deems the game to still be popular with the public.

CASH FOR LIFE


Top Rated Games


  1. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1161 - Strong Choice
  2. $10 Spectacular #1816 - Good metrics. Small pool. Game is selling fast. 
  3. $10 Fortune #1779 - Inter provincial game, Massive 15 million ticket pool. 
  4. $10 Wild 10's #1785 - Game is winding down. 16% of float estimated to be left. 
  5. $20 Extraordinary #1742 - Inter provincial game. 28% of float sold after 6 months. 


Games to Avoid


  1. $5 Jacks Are Wild #1787 - 1 , $8000 prize left, next largest is $1500. Shameful. 
  2. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - OLG is right: game continues to sell. We're not buying. 
  3. $1 Lucky Lines #1770 - A $1 with no Grand Prizes. Bottom feeder. 
  4. $2 Royal 7's #1790 - Only 1 of 6 Grand Prizes left. 34% of float left. 
  5. $3 Crossword #3206 - One teeny $50k Grand Prize left. 12% of float remains.


$1 - $2 Game Update

Cash Cow and Holiday Cash Out are the top two in this area.

$3 Game Update

Keno #1414 is the top rated $3 game.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Stick to Bonus Cash For Life.

$10 - $20 Game Update

All games are playable but Cadillac and Gift Pack are the two lowest rated.


Comings and Goings


No games were retired. Several are getting long in the tooth.

A new Scrabble game #1821 was launched. This game has good prize distribution for a $3 game. It has a normal float size of just over 3 million tickets. Here is the prize breakdown:

Grand Prize - 2.4% of revenue - 2nd of the 10 - $3 games.
<GP >= $100 - 3.4% of revenue - 1st of 10
<$100 >$3 - 46.3% of revenue - 9th of 10.
$3 - 12.8% of revenue - 3rd of 10 (negative)

This game begins its life as the 3rd rated of the 10 current $3 games. It has potential. See CL66's posting to last week's entry for a more detailed breakdown.

Another new game, $1 Cross Express #1811 is also on the listings but no game sheet has posted to date. Come on OLG - get those two things synced.


Personal Play


The euphoria of an almost break even week two weeks ago came to a thudding end this week as four Bonus Cash For Life's returned $0, a Holiday Spectacular returned $0, a Lotto Max and a 649 were losers, and a $10 Gift Pack returned $2 on the free $2 Cash For Life ticket. I'm back down to an ROI of 59%. I simply have to get to 60% by years end.


In Conclusion


Thanks to the posters who provided the information on the ability to transfer lump sum Cash For Life Grand Prizes and, according to the OLG, how long "life" is! Check the comments from last week if you want to learn about this interesting feature which I doubt that I will ever have use for :-)

A reader went out to buy a Gift Pack last week and ended up with a Holiday Spectacular by mistake - they're both white tickets. Not the end of the world as I rate the ticket he got by mistake as a better choice but he wanted the darned Gift Pack and thus remains slightly tweaked.

Skill testing question. I took a look at how much money the OLG made out of each game that remains active and has been on sale for at least one month. I calculated tickets sold, cost of ticket, and take out rate. here are the top three:

1. $3 Crossword
2. $5 Cross Tripler
3. $3 Super Bingo

And the worst performers:

1. $4 CFL
2. $1 Cash Cow
3. $2 Royal 7's


Enjoy your week.


Doug