Turbo Cash #1713 and Bejeweled #1724 Continue to Battle

Neither Turbo Cash nor Bejeweled surrendered a top prize this past week. $250,000 is the top prize for each game. Bejeweled has 6 top prizes left with current odds of 220,000:1 to win one. Turbo Cash has 2 top prizes left and odds of 130,000:1 to win one of them. Bejeweled has the best chance of any game to win $100 or more with 1 chance in 130 to do so.

Either game is a strong play.

A reminder that if your goal is to have the best chance to win $100, taking into account the cost of the ticket,  Fast $100 #1688 is your game. The downside here is that $100 is the top prize for the game. Your current chances are 1 in 800 for your $1 investment. Not bad.

 

Best Game for Winning the Top Prize
$1 - $3 Games - Snow Globe #1727, Frogger #1718, Mahjong #1732
$4 - $10 Games - Instant Millions #1683, CFL Blowout #1760, Turbo Cash #1713

Best Game for Winning $100 or more
$1 - $3 Games - Crossword #1299, QFGCrossword #3201, Bingo Express #1707
$4 - $10 Games - Bejeweled #1724, Merry Mult #1723, Turbo Cash #1713

Best Overall Games
$1 - $3 Games - Snow Globe #1727, Frogger #1718, Mahjong #1731
$4 - $10 Games - Bejeweled #1724, Turbo Cash #1713, Money Mult #1692

Games to Avoid
Golden Goose #1700, More Lucky #1712, Super Bingo #3011, Wonderful Life #1714

Each of the first three games to avoid has less than 20% of its ticket float left to sell. Wonderful Life still has 37% left. It will be interesting to see how long the OLG continues to offer this lame duck game to uninformed  players.

Comings and Goings

I tip my hat to the OLG this week. Their policy states that any game with a top prize of $100,000 or more and has all of its top prizes claimed, is canceled. I was ready to jump on them this week as Black Tripler met those criteria last week. Sure enough, the game was retired during the past week. About 23% of its float remained to be sold which made me suspect that the OLG would try to squeeze some more sales out of game before following their own policy. I was pleasantly surprised.

No new games were added this week.

Personal Play

Even though Bejeweled is a marginally better choice, I continue to stick with Turbo Cash given my investment in this game to date. Four tickets last week yielded one $50 winner. This is the exact reason that I prefer Turbo Cash --- the game offers $800,000 more prizes between $10 and $100 than Bejeweled. My overall cash rate has declined to 39% but my total return on investment in 2013 is 90%.

Even though I continue to spend over my budget amount ($20/week), I am fatally hooked on Turbo Cash. Even so, my local seller had 6 tickets for sale when I arrived for my "fix". There was no way that I was spending $60 and I am certain that if there was a big winner among the six, that I would miss it when taking only 4 of the tickets. My only solution is to have the retailer pick the four tickets for me. If I see a Turbo Cash Top Prize winner in Ottawa any time soon, I'm certain to have some bad dreams.

There was one $100,000 winner this past week. The lucky winner lives in Thunder Bay. The big winner was in the Cash For Life Blowout where a very lucky player in Almonte won $1000/week for life. The OLG allows players to accept $750,000 in lieu of the weekly pay out. Which prize would you take?

Play Smart.

Doug

Turbo Cash #1713 Remains the King

Turbo Cash sold another 4% of its ticket float last week without surrendering a Top Prize. Your chances are presently 180,000:1 to win $250,000 with your $10 investment.



Best Top Prize Games:
$1 - $2 - Snow Globe #1727
$3 - $5 - Cash For Life Blowout #1160
$10 - $20 - Extravaganza #1709

Best $100 or better Games:
$1 - $2 - Snow Globe #1727
$3 - $5 - Money Mult #1692
$10 - $20 - Turbo Cash #1713

Best Overall Games:
1. Turbo Cash #1713
2. Money Mult #1692
3. Merry Money #1723

Games to Avoid:
Golden Goose #1700
More Lucky #1712
Wonderful Life #1714

This week's analysis includes more information for Extravaganza and $100k For Life. You can find the outstanding prize information here: http://www.olg.ca/lotteries/games/viewInstantTicketInfo.do . The outstanding prizes for these two games is reported on a national basis. For prizes of less than $1000, one has to call the OLG Call Centre. The OLG does not know exactly how many winners were sent to Ontario. I have made the assumption that the number of winners is in proportion to the number of tickets that were made available. This assumption becomes more valid the larger the number. Ontario receives about one third of all the tickets. The number of Top Prize winners could easily be more or less than one third. However, the number of $100 winners is almost certainly close to one third given the large number of winners.

Comings and Goings

Two new games were introduced this week: Quest for Gold Crossword #3201 and Instant Bingo #3008.
Each game has a good number of winning tickets that pay more than the cost of the ticket (16.5% for Bingo and 17.8% for QFG Crossword). Each game has a large ticket float. QFG Crossoword has a float of more than 25 million tickets! This game will be in play for many months.

Winners and Losers

Five Turbo Cash tickets produced one $50 winner. It was the last ticket scratched and I was pretty bummed out by that point. Forty-one percent of my 17 tickets this year have been winners. My total return on investment is 85%.

Winners of $100,000 or more this week hailed from: Innisfil, Burlington, Lakefield, and Cambridge.


Good Luck
Doug

Turbo Cash #1713 loses a Top Prize - Still the Choice

A lucky player in Sault Ste Marie (OLG Headquarters) has won one of the three Turbo Cash Top Prizes of $250,000. However, the game was such a strong play that it remains the top choice even with the loss of the Top Prize. Twenty-Nine percent of the float remains to be sold and two of the three Top Prizes remain. The game is rated 4th in terms of Top Prize play and tops the list for $100 (or more) prizes play.




Best Top Prize Games:
$1 - $2 Games - Snow Globe #1727
$3 - $5 Games - Instant Millions #1683
$10 - $20 Games - Turbo Cash #1713

Best $100 Prize or Greater Games:
$1 - $2 Games - Bingo Express #1707
$3 - $5 Games - Money Mult #1692
$10 - $20 Games - Turbo Cash #1713

Top Three Overall Games based upon the combination of the two evaluation methods.
1. Turbo Cash #1713
2. Money Mult #1692
3. Instant GP #1919

Players should note that Fast 100 #1688 is by far the best $100 or more game but $100 is also its Top Prize. If that's what you're looking for, play that game. You have one chance in 740 to win $100.

My evaluation of Extravaganza and $100K For Life may be off as I await OLG's response to my request to indicate prizes claimed down to the $100. Extravaganza is a national game with a portion of its tickets allocated to the Ontario market. That may prove to be a complication. OLG has acknowledged my request and I hope to receive a reply this week.

Games to avoid are Golden Goose #1700 and Wonderful Life #1714. Each game is devoid of Top Prizes.

Comings and Goings

Crossword #1298 was retired this week. The ticket float was almost exhausted with less than 5% of its tickets left to be sold of its original float of over 20 million tickets! One Top Prize remained to be claimed at the time of its retirement.

A new $2 game, Silver Gold, was added this past week. The prize distribution is typical for $2 games. This one has slightly more winning tickets but most of the difference is winning tickets for the $2 cost of the ticket.

Winners and Losers

My expanded play this past week produced two winners from five Turbo Cash tickets. Total return was $30. I have a 50% win rate and a 79% return on investment. Both numbers are above expected results. Still, I need one decent winner before my inevitable losing streak kicks in.

Winners of $10,000 or more this past week hailed from: Cambride, Jang Dae Doig, Carlton Place, Port Elgin, Burlington, Arnprior, Cornwall, Mississauga, Brampton, Meaford, Sioux Lookout, Sudbury, Little Britain, Oakville, Peterborough, and SS Marie.

So if I am guessing correctly, a visitor from Korea buys a Scratch and Win and hits for $100k! Where's the justice in that? I spent a summer in Sioux Lookout as a Junior Forest Ranger. Loved the experience but I'm a little surprised that they had a winner last week and the city of Toronto did not.

Good Luck
Doug

New Evaluation Method for 2013

Before I get to the content of this post, Turbo Cash remains the unblemished choice if you are buying tickets this week.

How one evaluates the various Scratch and Win games is a matter of preference. Input from readers suggests that my emphasis on the Grand Prizes is misplaced as the chances of anyone winning one are never more than minuscule. I understand what those folks are saying but surely we buy the tickets with the Grand Prize in mind to some extent.

The good thing about Scratch and Win games is that they vary in their makeup. The current recommended game is Turbo Cash. This is a $10 game with 3 - $250,000 grand prizes. By comparison, Ontario Millions contains 3 - $1,000,000 Grand Prizes for only $5. If your only consideration was the Grand Prize, you would go with Ontario Millions. But the OLG profit for Turbo Cash is 30% and for Ontario Millions 33%. How is that possible? It is because Turbo Cash contains more smaller prizes and players have a greater chance to win something (1 in every 3.13 tickets is a winner) than with Ontario Millions (1 in every 4.40 tickets is a winner). If the jackpot was your only criterion then you should be playing Lotto Max and 649. In those games the winner gets rich and everyone else is a loser.

Old Evaluation Method

During the course of the past year, the game I recommended took the percentage of grand prizes remaining and subtracted the sum of the percentage of tickets left to be sold and the house take. As an example, Turbo Cash has 100% of its grand prizes left to be claimed. It has a house advantage of 30% and 44% of its tickets left to be sold. These numbers yield a rating of +26. The Value Play used the number of $1000 prizes left to be claimed and divided that number by the number of tickets left. The result was then divided by the cost of the ticket.

New Evaluation Method

I am going to continue to use two methods but I am going to change the evaluation method. The main method will multiply the number of grand prizes left to be claimed by the amount of the grand prize. This total will then be divided by the product of the number of tickets left to be sold and the cost of the ticket.

The value play will take the total number of tickets left to be sold whose value is $100 or greater and divide that number by the product of the number of tickets left to be sold and the cost of the ticket and the chances of winning anything more than what you paid for the ticket. The OLG does not always publish the outstanding ticket information down to the $100 level. I will be asking them to do so in future.

The blog in 2013 will identify the best $1-$2, $3-$5, and $10-$20 games for each method.

Personal Play

I ended the year by making a double purchase the week before Christmas. Four Turbo Cash tickets contained 2 winners totaling $25. I ended the year cashing 38% of all of the tickets with a 63% Return on Investment. The cash rate was higher than I should have expected but I was unable to get even one good cash. My largest cash was $50 and I only had one of those.

Oshima from Ottawa reported a $20 cash this past week. Hopefully she treated her husband to Starbucks with her profit. Jay in Scarborough went crazy by investing his entire $70 profit from playing Pro-Line all year into a variety of tickets. He turned the $70 into $109. Not bad.

Happy New Year to all visitors. I'll be back next week with a clean slate and new methods.

Doug