Christmas Instant Game Ratings

What follows is my current evaluation of all Instant Games. Remember that my ratings focus upon the percentage of Grand Prizes remaining in a game versus the percentage of the float that I estimate remains to be sold.

For example, More Lucky Lines, the top rated game, has all of its Grand Prizes of $75,000 left to be claimed and I estimate that 83% of the ticket float has been sold. That means that your chances to win a Grand Prize are 4 times greater than when the game began. Still unlikely, but these games give you the chance to play games with the best chance to win. The odds never change in the Lotto Games, only the size of the Grand Prize.

With that in mind, here are the current ratings as you pick up tickets for stocking stuffers:

$3

2144

More Lucky Lines

Top Rated

$10	2170	Cross Deluxe	Very Good
$10	2054	Royale	Very Good
$3	3027	Bingo	Very Good

$20	2052	Supreme	Good
$10	2129	25x Multiplier	Good
$10	2130	Bigger Spin Win	Good
$10	2162	Super Money	Good
$5	2093	Cross Tripler	Good
$5	2086	Ruby 7's	Good
$5	2126	Sizzling 5's	Good
$3	2142	Pac Man	Good
$3	2080	Scrabble	Good

$50	2159	Classic Extra	Neutral
$30	2051	Multi Million	Neutral
$30	2055	Triple Million	Neutral
$10	2157	Cash Out	Neutral
$5	2138	Bingo Doubler	Neutral
$5	2098	Bling	Neutral
$5	2135	Cross Tripler	Neutral
$5	2164	Holiday Win	Neutral
$5	3101	The Big Spin	Neutral
$3	3029	Bingo	Neutral
$3	3227	Cross Word	Neutral
$2	2149	Movie Money	Neutral

$20	2156	Celebrate 2020	Poor
$20	2169	Festive Fest	Poor
$10	1926	Instant Gift Pack	Poor
$4	1175	Cash For Life	Poor
$3	2167	Peppermint	Poor
$3	2158	Strike Spare	Poor
$2	2161	Ontario Love	Poor
$1	2152	Fiesta Treas	Poor
$1	2160	Jewel Jackpot	Poor

$3

3225

QFG Crossword

Very Poor

$2

2163

Stock Stuff

Terrible

If you're out looking for inexpensive tickets, avoid the Xmas themed Stocking Stuffer game. It's the worst game still being sold. Instead, choose 3027 Bingo or More Lucky Lines (if you can find any).

One last caution: if you're in the market for expensive tickets, exercise caution with the $50 Classic Extravaganza. The OLG is promoting this game with advertising. The audience may be under the impression that players receive seven $10 tickets for $50. This is not the case. If it were, I'd be asking my mom for an advance on my allowance to buy more. The game is just like any other. Your chances of winning a prize are 1 in 3.75 and the house take is 29.95% of all sales. There are seven tickets to scratch but the outcome for the package is predetermined. There are multiple games on each ticket which means that there is lots of action before you learn if your package was a winner. It is akin to getting more bang for your buck with a $5 Bingo Doubler versus a $3 Bingo ticket. Now, if you happen to have 7 grandkids and you want to give them the impression that Grandpa bought each of them a $10 Scratch Ticket, then by all means buy a package, open it up, and distribute the tickets as you please. Just don't be under the illusion that doing so is the same as buying 7 individual $10 tickets in other games. Cross Deluxe or Royale are the best games for the high end player. 

Merry Christmas to everyone. I'll be back next week with a breakdown of my mission to find and scratch as many More Lucky Lines tickets as I can find. If you can find any in your store, pick them up. The retailers will tell you that the game has been canceled. Not true - keep hunting. 

Doug

Lucky Lines - Game No 2144

The recommended game for play continues to be More Lucky Lines. One hundred and seventy-five of the 908 top prizes have been claimed. This suggests that 19% of the tickets remain to be sold. The reason that the game is recommended is that all three of the $75,000 Grand Prizes remain outstanding.

This means that your chances of winning a Grand Prize stand at one in 200,000 as opposed to one in a million at the outset of the game.

The game itself is very horizontal in its structure. This is to say that the majority of prizes are of the small variety. This is quite different from a game like LottoMax where there is one winner and everyone else fights over scraps. Your chances in that game of winning $20 are over 80-1. In a game like More Lucky Lines your return should mirror the published information. There is one winning ticket in every 3.27 tickets sold and the overall return is 64.95%. The more tickets one buys, the more likely it is that your results will mirror those numbers. I have purchased seven tickets so far. Four of them were winners returning a total of $22. Based on the numbers, I should have expected to have 2 winners and a total of $14. The game is flattened even further by having a second prize of only $5000. Most $3 games like this one have second prizes of $25,000.

The good news is that with this sort of churn, I can continue to reinvest winnings in pursuit of those three outstanding Grand Prizes. With a chance to win of one in 200,000, and with 7 tickets purchased, my chances were one in 30,000.




But there is a problem: the tickets are very hard to find. Every store I go into tells me that the game has been cancelled. This is not true, as of today. I estimate that 19% of the tickets remain to be sold which represents over 600,000 tickets. But the OLG is not providing the sellers with any more tickets. I've asked my local sellers to ask the OLG person why they are not providing them with tickets for this game. They look at me like I'm a martian.

There are five reasons why an existing game can be canceled. Here they are:

1. Game is sold out.

2. All top prizes are claimed for games with $100,000 or greater top prizes.

3. Average weekly sales reflect significantly decreased customer demand and a new replacement game is planned.

4. Quality issue with game in market.

5. Security issue with game in market.

Experience tells me that if the OLG were to cancel this game now, only reason number 3 could apply. The wicked aspect of this is that sales are largely a function of availability. The OLG can argue that the game is no longer popular as there are no tickets being sold. It's a self fulfilling prophecy if you don't offer the tickets for sale. The conundrum is that  the OLG has sold over two million tickets for this game and they have yet to give away a Grand Prize. If you were to buy tickets to a raffle and found out later that no prize was given away, how would that sit with you?

I imagine that inside the bowels of OLG headquarters there is thinking going on that goes as follows:

1. If every ticket for this game was to be sold, the profit would be $3,303,339. 
2. As of today, 81% of the tickets have been sold (2,545,000) with an expected profit of $2,675,748. 
3. It is expected that with that volume of tickets sold, at least 2 of the 3 Grand Prizes should have been claimed. 
4. If the game is canceled today, there would be an extra $225,000 added to the profit for the game ($75,000 x 3) as those prizes would remain with the OLG.
5. The total return on the tickets not yet sold should be $630,000. But, with the 3 outstanding prizes still up for grabs, the OLG will have to pay off 3 - $75,000 winners in addition to all of the other winners. 
6. By canceling the game now and not selling the remaining tickets, the profit for the game will be increased by 10%. 

Do you see the ethical dilemma? I suspect that the OLG has a blind spot here based on what I have seen before in similar circumstances. In general, tickets begin to become scarce once 90% of the tickets have been sold. The scarcity here began when slightly more than 20% of the tickets remained.

My advice is to get out there now and try to find tickets for this game before the bean counters at OLG put their interests ahead of yours. Let me know how you make out and, as always, only play within your personal budget. The odds are always against you.


Doug