Cross Tripler #1791 - Long In The Tooth but Still On Top

Sales have stalled for the top rated game due to the scarcity of tickets left to be purchased. Given that the game's deactivation date was Feb 6th we can expect it to be deleted from the Outstanding Prize listing shortly. Four $100,000 winning tickets remain outstanding and only an estimated 11% of the float remains to be sold. Pick them up, if you can find them.

(Orange version of the game depicted below)

Top Rated Games

1. $5 Cross Tripler #1791 - A strong choice. Worth the search for tickets. 
2. $10 Classic Ruby #1792 - Best churn for any current game and a positive top prize rating. 
3. $5 Diamond 7's #1822 - 60.6% churn and a 1.29 positive top prize rating. 
4. $5 20X Lucky #1808 - 4 of 7 Top prizes remain and only 26% of the float. 
5. $3 QFG Crossword #3208 - New game has a very high churn rate. 

Games to Avoid

1. $4 Double Cash For Life #1170 - The most top heavy game just lost a grand prize.
2. $2 Black Jack #1804 - All three remaining Grand Prizes claimed last week. A dud as of now. 
3. $10 Bejeweled #1786 - Poor churn and 1/2 the grand prizes gone in 1st 1/3 of float. 
4. $3 Scrabble #1821 - Top 4 prize categories all claimed. Largest prize left is $5000.
5. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - Game becomes less horrible as it winds down. Still horrible.

Games with most $/dollar spent going to Grand Prize Winners

1. Bonus Cash For Life #1168
2. Double Cash For Life #1170
3. 20X Lucky #1808
4. Cross Tripler #1791
5. Fortune #1779

Games Currently Devoid of Grand Prizes

• Scrabble #1821 - largest prize left is $5000
• Words With Friends #1798 - largest prize left is $25,000
• More Lucky Lines #1794 - largest prize left is $5000
• Black Jack #1804 - largest prize left is $1000

Comings and Goings

Royal 7's was retired. It had 1 Grand Prize remaining and 19% of its float (593,000 tickets). The game was rated as a poor choice.

New is Instant Bingo. It is a $3 - 9.5 million ticket float game with 10 Grand Prizes of $50,000. There is a "fast win" prize of $15 available (1 in 50 tickets) and multiple win tickets. The payout return is 65.07% which is the third highest for $3 games.

I'm not a big fan of these types of games but they are very popular among Instant Game players. To me, a 950,000 to 1 shot to win $50,000 is not enticing. The churn rate for the game is also only average.

Personal Play

My "annus horribulus" continues with a meagre $10 return last week on $50 worth of tickets. My overall return YTD is 44% with the raffle game investment yet to be determined. I'm going to play another $50 this week just to get my numbers up to poor from terrible - I hope.

In Conclusion

I have once again tweaked my rating system. I credit the readers and commentators to this blog for helping me refine in my own mind what it is that I am looking for in a game. My rating system now involves two factors:

1. The churn rate of the game. This is represented by the percentage of total revenue for the game that  is returned to winners of less than $100. These are the prizes that are not listed on the Outstanding Prize list. This number never changes throughout the life of the game. 
2. The top prize imbalance. I calculate the cash value of all the prizes listed on the outstanding prize list and calculate the percentage of prizes left versus the amount when the game began. I then do the same for the actual number of prizes claimed versus how many there were to begin with. 

I then divide the former number by the latter to determine if there is an imbalance between the two. If 50% of the top prizes have been claimed but only 40% of the cash value of those prizes has been claimed, the game will have a positive rating of 1.20 (60/50).

Lastly, I combine the two factors in my secret formula to determine the final rating for the game. My comments in the future will relate to "churn" and "ratio". This is the shorthand for the two factors described above.

Here is an interesting lottery story for readers to skim: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1494415/-i-m-just-here-to-help-leamington-resident-plans-to-donate-250-000-top-prize-from-instant-cadillac-riches-win . (A neighbour of Darth's, no doubt).

Can you smell the spring? Its coming.

Doug

Cross Tripler #1791 Strengthens Its Grip

I don't know how another 30,000 of those tickets were sold last week given that they are nowhere to be found where I am. We have a situation brewing here whereby four of the initial 15 Grand Prizes remain outstanding and only an estimated 11% of the float remains. The game is on its last legs given that its deactivation date was Feb 06th. Get out and turn over some rocks. Your chances are only 223,000:1. Scratch ten a day for 61 years and you'll have a good chance to win a Grand Prize. Sound terrible? Well, its the best of any game currently for sale.


It's the orange version of this game:

Top Rated Games

1. $5 Cross Tripler #1791 - All systems go.
2. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1168 - Good game, great Grand Prize.
3. $5 20X Lucky #1808 - Good choice, top game with lots of tickets available. 
4. $5 Diamond 7's #1822 - first appearance on top 5 list. 
5. $1 Wild 8's #1813 - Love it when $1 games make the list. It's scratch heaven. 

Games to Avoid

1. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - saw a woman playing this game the other day. Noooooo!
2. $3 Scrabble #1821 - lost last Grand Prize last week. Largest prize left is $5000.
3. $3 Words With Friends #1798 - tripped and fell right out of the gate. Zero Grand Prizes left. 
4. $10 Bejeweled #1786 - Low value for a $10 game. 
5. $20 Extraordinary #1742 - 10 months to sell 30% of the float. Horrible value for $20.

If It's The Grand Prize You're After

(Games with most $ from every dollar spent that goes to the Grand Prize winners)

1. Double Cash For Life
2. Bonus Cash For Life
3. Cross Tripler #1791
4. Fortune
5. Bejeweled

Comings and Goings

Win Take All #1825 was introduced this past week. The game is a little light on churning prizes due to its relative high amount of prizes between $100 and the Grand Prize. Not keen on the game but alternate evaluation methods may rate the game higher. It has potential to move up.

Also new is Living The Life. It is a hybrid game falling somewhere between the Lotto games and the Instant games. It is marketed as a raffle game and that is fairly accurate. There is a maximum of 6,172,840 tickets that will be sold. The computer spits out your ticket number(s) from among those that are remaining. There is an early bird draw to encourage us all to get out there early.

The game is top heavy, like a Lotto game,  with the Grand Prize winner hauling down $3,000,000. There is a secondary prize of $1,000,000 and three $100,000 prizes. You will have essentially one chance in one hundred to win anything and almost 100% of those winners will win $20.

The game also has the chance to be quite profitable to the OLG. Because the tickets can be sold at three different price points ($5 for 1, $10 for 3, $20 for 7), it is hard to know what the final revenue will be. If all of the tickets were sold individually, the OLG would return 21.6% of the revenue. If all the tickets were sold on a 7 for $20 basis, the return would be 59%. What does this mean? In a worst case scenario, the game will be as profitable to the OLG as a $1 Instant Game, speaking in terms of percentages. Potential profit on the game for the OLG is somewhere between $11 and $24 million, if all the tickets are sold. The good thing about the game is that we know that there will be a winner for every prize level above $20. That's something.

Personal Play

My brutalization continues. Why? $10 tickets are proving to be a wasteland. I have purchased 3 Holiday Spectaculars, 6 Cadillac Riches, and 2 Ruby Reds so far this year. My total return is $10 for that $110 investment. Beyond lame! Should I continue to beat my head against that wall or move on? You tell me.

In Conclusion

A reader was told by a seller that a Cross Tripler ticket that they had was not available for sale as it was a sample ticket for marketing purposes. I phoned the OLG and was informed that no such thing exists. A photocopy, maybe, but the OLG does not produce samplers. Methinks a return visit to that vendor is in order.

I'm going to write to suggest to the OLG that they create a game where the Grand Prizes are trips to Florida in the winter. This weather is brutal. It takes everything I have to venture out to buy Instant tickets. Wait! What about www.olg.ca? Nah.


Keep plugging away.

Doug

Cross Tripler #1791 Continues Its Run on Top

The top rated game went through an estimated 90,000 tickets this past week without losing one of its four remaining Grand Prizes. The remaining float is now down to 11% and the tickets are definitely hard to find in the Ottawa area. The game also reached its deactivation date on 6 February which means the retailers will be returning unopened packages and perhaps selling their odds and ends. Your chances to win a prize are 1:230,000. That is the best odds of any game currently offered for sale.

There was discussion on last weeks blog about the extreme unlikelihood of winning a Grand Prize. What is one chance in 230,000? In terms we can relate to, if you purchased 10 of these tickets every day, you could expect to win a Grand Prize in 63 years time. You indeed have to be lucky.

If you're out looking for this game, remember, it is the orange version, not the purple one appearing below:

  

Top Rated Games

1. $5 Cross Tripler #1791 - 27% of Grand Prizes left and 11% of the float. 
2. $4 Bonus Cash for Life #1168 - 1 juicy Grand Prize left. Check before you buy.
3. $3 Scrabble #1821 - 14% of float and 21% of top prize money left. 
4. $5 20X Lucky #1808 - 59.6% of revenue to winners of less than $100.
5. $10 Cadillac Riches #1797 - 41% of float and 52% of top prize winnings left.

Games To Avoid

1. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - deactivation date reached. Yippee!
2. $10 Bejeweled #1786 - 3 of 6 Grand Prizes left and 70% of the float. Watch out!
3. $20 Extraordinary #1742 - They can't sell these tickets. $20 for a poor choice. 
4. $3 Cashingo #1820 - More top prize money lost versus tickets by 10%.
5. $3 Keno #1415 - Negative winners to prize ratio of 16%.

If Its the Grand Prize You're After

(Based upon the amount of each dollar spent that goes toward the Grand Prize(s))

1. Double Cash For Life
2. Bonus Cash For Life
3. Cross Tripler 1791
4. Fortune
5. Bejeweled

Comings and Goings

The horrific $1 Lucky Lines was expunged from the world this past week. Thank goodness I don't have to whine about that any more.

Quest For Gold Crossword and Words With Friends were each introduced. A review of each game is contained in the comments to last week's post. QFG Crossword is a jumbo game with a ticket float of over 25 million - ten times the float for Words With Friends. Each game is intended to be a churning game with lousy Grand Prizes. The problem is that they are not even the best games for churning. I rank them at 14th and 15th to begin their respective life spans.

Personal Play

The lottery gods smacked me down after my good previous week. A single $5 was returned from a $35 investment. My YTD ROI now stands at 55%. Bad, but the year is young.

In Conclusion

I enjoyed TMF's comments on what he looks for in a game. He wants to churn tickets as much as possible with continual reinvestment in his search for the Grand Prize. I'm going to work this week on a measure that captures that element.

I also signed up for www.playolg.ca a couple of weeks ago. After burning through my first free $10, the kind folks at OLG sent me a second $10 freebie. I'm pleased to report that after twenty minutes of play I still had $5 left.

The site is entertaining and the ability to buy Lotto Max and 649 tickets on-line will be appealing for many. The sign-up process was laborious and involves many different rules around usernames and passwords. My usual ones could not be used so I had to alter them which means that I will never remember them.

They are also prominently displaying messages about regulating your play. They require you to set limits on your play in terms of time and losses on an hourly, weekly, and monthly basis. There is also messaging about this all over the site and they have even run radio spots on the subject specifically as it relates to the on-line site. It's strange, by comparison, that when I visit an OLG Casino it is next to impossible to find the Responsible Gaming Council representative anywhere. At Woodbine, they have a tiny booth outside the slots near the coat check.

What this tells me is that OLG is well aware of how dangerous a concept this is. For some folks, being able to pump money into the slots and on-line table games while sitting around the house in their pajamas presents an almost irresistible bogey man. At least when one has to get dressed, go out into the cold, and drive to the casino, it actually takes some effort. I suspect that most casual players will not be attracted to the site other than for Lotto purchases. It's the folks with gambling problems who will be at risk and that is why the OLG is so obviously trying to cover its tutu. Modernization - ain't it grand!?

I'll find it interesting to track the OLG's financial statements post launch to see if the site ends up cannibalizing the slots play. One last point is that they publish on the web site the actual return rate on each slot game. Strange that that is the same information that the OLG refused to release to me under Freedom of Information as, in their view, it compromised the financial interests of the Province of Ontario. Why the difference? I'll let you ponder that one.

Best

Doug

Cross Tripler #1791 Tops Revised Rating Method

In my never ending pursuit of evaluating Instant Games I have implemented a new method. I have been swayed by those whose priority is plentiful smaller prizes. At the same time, I can't entirely forsake imbalances in the availability of Grand Prizes. The new method rates two factors:

1. I take the percentage of top prizes (all those listed on the outstanding prize list) that remain available and compare that to the percentage of prize money remaining as compared to what it was at the beginning of the game. All games begin with a ratio of 1. If Grand Prizes are claimed at a rate faster than the total prizes reported, the number will fall below 1. If a positive imbalance develops the number will grow to be greater than 1.

2. The percentage of revenue returned to players who win prizes greater than the cost of the ticket and less than $100. This number represents the volume of smaller prizes in any game.

I combine the two numbers in the following formula ( First Factor x 100 + 2 x Second Factor). I'm pleased with the initial results but we'll see how it goes. This is my third method since I began this blog. Lets hope it lasts. Comments are always welcome.

The first top rated game in the new method is Cross Tripler #1791. The game has 13% of its tickets left and 23% of the top prize revenue left. 47.8 percent of its total revenue is allocated to prizes greater than $5 and less than $100. All I have to do now is find some.

Note: This is the orange version of the game.

Top Rated Games

1. $5 Cross Tripler #1791 - 4 $100,000 prizes left and only 1 million tickets. 
2. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1168 - only 1 Grand Prize left and 11% of the float.
3. $5 20XLucky #1808 - 50% of top money and 36% of top prizes left. 
4. $3 Scrabble #1821 - 2 of 3 Grand Prizes left and only 17% of the float.
5. $10 Cadillac Riches - positive ratio by 24% but prizes a bit low at 41.3%.

Games to Avoid

1. $3 More Lucky Lines #1794 - can it be true that it has reached its deactivation date?
2. $1 Lucky Lines #1770 - Has been horrible since it arrived. 
3. $10 Bejewelled #1786 - One poster loves this game. Only 3 Grand Prizes left and 74% of float.
4. $20 Extraordinary #1742 - The game is becoming an albatross. 
5. $3 Keno #1415 - - 26% on the ratio but a good number of small prizes. 

$1 - $2 Game Update

Wild 8's is the pick in this area. 

$3 Game Update

If you can't find Scrabble, Cashingo Crossword and Super Bingo are all reasonable choices.

$4 - $5 Game Update

Three of the top five games come from this group. Stick to them. 

$10 - $20 Game Update

Avoid Bejewelled and Extraordinary.

Comings and Goings

It was a Stalinistic purge with seven games being retired from play. All the Holiday games were included including one of Shelley's favourites - Holly Jolly. Cash For Life #1161 and Crossword #3206 were caught up in the housecleaning. I'm sorry to see Holiday Spectacular go as it was a very well rated game but it was a Holiday Game and I have to agree that their time was up. 

No new games were introduced. 

Personal Play

A rare positive week as I struck for a $20 prize in both 20X Lucky and Bonus Cash For Life. A further $5 produced a $45 return on a $32 investment. 

To Conclude

Two posts ago I mentioned the problem with the new Double Cash for Life Game. The game sheet indicates that 69% of the revenue is returned to players whereas when you work out the math the total comes to 64%. The 64% is more in the range of $3 games and 69% is the normal range for $10 games. Bonus Cash For Life was a notable exception with a 69% return thus justifying its name. 

The OLG called me about the matter offering the explanation that the difference was based upon the outcomes for people who may take the $2000/wk for life instead of the lump sum. That answer did not make any sense as the 5% discrepancy amounts to $2 million and they would have no idea what the difference is in outcomes for winners who take one option over another as almost all of those cases are still playing themselves out. I was told that they would get back to me. 

A second call informed me that the lump sum payout for the game is $1,850,000. That answers makes sense but is surprising nonetheless. The $2 version of the popular game has a lump sum option of $67,500, the regular $4 version $675,000 and one would have thought that the Double Cash For Life would have paid $1,350,000. In fact, I called the OLG when the game launched and confirmed that fact. Now I'm told that the lump sum for the game is fully $500,000 more than double the normal game. The answer works but it seems a little strange. Might it have something to do with the fact that the ten year bond pays a scant 1.7% requiring the OLG to put more cash aside to pay the annuity if someone takes the $2000/week? I'm scratching my head but that is an outstanding prize for a $4 investment. The money allotted to the four Grand Prize winners represents 18.5% of the total revenue for the game. That is the highest such figure by far for any game that I have seen. 

I signed up for www.playolg.ca this week and quickly burned through my free $10. More on the new site next week. 

Good Luck to All. 

Doug