Cross Tripler #1791 - One Last Gasp

The top rated game has managed to avoid deletion from the Outstanding Prize list for one more week.  It remains a very strong pick with 61.4% of total revenue returned to small prize winners and four of its 7 Grand Prizes still left to claim from among the 850,000 tickets (10% of float) that remain outstanding. Of course, almost all of those tickets are safely back in OLG headquarters and on their way to destruction. If you can find any stragglers, as some folks have been able to do, pick them up. I'll be shocked if the game remains on the listing for another week.

I'm tired of including the image of the sister game of our game of choice. The only image of our game is from the game sheet and I am unable to cut and paste it into the blog. My apologies.

Top Rated Games

1. $5 Cross Tripler #1791 - Clear choice. 
2. $10 Classic Ruby #1792 - Very good small prize availability and a positive Top Prize ratio. 
3. $5 20X Lucky #1808 - Game is under the radar but worth playing. 
4. $4 Bonus Cash For Life #1168 - That big juicy prize and 885,000 tickets makes it tempting. 
5. $5 Diamond 7's #1822 - Solid choice, if you like the game. 

Games to Avoid

1. $4 Double Cash For Life #1170 - top heavy game and 1 of those prizes is gone. Patience. 
2. $2 Black Jack #1804 - 57% of top prizes gone and only 12% of top prize money remains. 
3. $10 Bejeweled #1786 - lots of posters play this game. Not much going for it for $10. 
4. $3 Scrabble #1821 - top prizes have been gutted. 
5. $5 Hit Jackpot #1818 - poor small prize availability and poor ratio. 

Best Games If Its the Grand Prize You're After

• Bonus Cash For Life
• Double Cash For Life
• Cross Tripler #1791
• 20X Lucky
• Fortune

Games With No Grand Prizes Left

• Words With Friends
• Scrabble
• Black Jack

Comings and Goings

There will be a wake held at OLG Headquarters on Sunday in memory of More Lucky Lines. The favourite whipping boy, and with good reason, of this blog is no more. It is an Ex-Game. See Ya!

New on the scene is Wheel of Fortune. Regrettably, the game stumbled coming out of the starting gate when it surrendered a Grand Prize in its first week. Folks have already bought 250,000 of these babies. I attribute it all to Vanna White. The game features a little quirk in that one in every 24 tickets is worth a free ticket in the Wheel of Fortune lotto game. I crunched the numbers and the OLG has not included anything that would be won via the free ticket in its calculation of total return for the game. That makes it a freebie. An extra tick mark from me for that feature.

Personal Play

A stinking disaster. $46 worth of tickets and a $10 return. I switched to a new seller three weeks ago and I have had three terrible weeks since making that choice. I'm moving on, Mr. Mac's Milk Store.

In Conclusion

Here's a story about a couple in Massacheusets who won $15 million on a scratch ticket!

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/15-million-jackpot-engaged-massachusetts-couple/story?id=29371318

The small prize odds on that game must be horrible or, they have one Grand Prize and a billion tickets. Why do our American Friends have to have the biggest prizes? Those powerball lottery prizes can reach up to $300,000,000 or more. That's A-Rod kind of money.


Best to all.


Doug

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