Crossword #1298 Tops the List

Last week was one of change. Both of our top games had Grand Prizes claimed. Moving in to take their place is the $3 Crossword #1298. Nine of the 16 Grand Prizes of $50,000 remain unclaimed with 25% of the tickets left to be sold. Be careful when shopping as there are now three Crossword games on the market. #1297 is on its last legs and #1299 has just been introduced this week. These are jumbo games with 20 million tickets for each. Check your ticket to ensure that you have the correct game.

Best $1 - $2 Game  - Go Bananas
Best $10-$20 Game - Turbo Cash

Keno #1409 remains the best value play. There are 64 prizes of $1000 or more and 75,000 tickets left to be sold. Instant 649 offers the best odds to win a Grand Prize at 66,000:1.

Comings and Goings

Each of the three games with no Grand Prizes left remain in play. They are: Cross Xpress, Horseshoes, More Lucky Lines #1651. No games were retired.

Two new games were added: $3 Crossword #1299 and $5 Crossword Tripler #1720. In the Crossword game there is one winner in every 3.25 tickets and 42% of the winners are for the purchase price of the ticket. In the Crossword Tripler game there is one winner in every 3.47 tickets and 47% of the winners are for the cost of the ticket.

There were several winners of $35,000 or more this week. The winners were from: Mississauga, Cambridge, Roseneath, St. Thomas, Unionville, Burford, London, and Kingston.

Personal Play

I'm beginning to break out of  my slump. Nine tickets from Keno and Scrabble contained five winners totaling $25. My win rate of 33% to date is excellent but I can't snag a good priced winner. Current Return on Investment is 47% which is poor.

Our Scarborough player cashed for $38 on 5 Scrabble tickets so he seems to be out of his funk. Another Ottawa reader reported receiving "bupkus" for her Scrabble ticket.

Good Luck with the new game.

Doug

Banco #1591 Takes Over the Top Spot

The Gold Tripler game has been knocked out of top spot for the time being after one of the three top prizes was claimed last week. That's unfortunate but I can't say that I am displeased. I bought a total of six Gold Tripler tickets over the course of three weeks. Total return was $15 on one winning ticket. Not an encouraging result.

The new top game is Banco #1592 but this may prove to be a frustration for readers of this blog. Only 20% of the tickets remain and a seller last week told me that they had been asked to return all of their unsold tickets to head office. The game is still showing on the "Unclaimed Prize Page" but not on the game menu. Further, there appears to not have been any large prizes claimed over the course of the past week. How can the OLG cancel a game when 2 of the 3 grand prizes remain outstanding after having sold 80% of the tickets? Good question. I have asked the OLG that very question and their answer is troublesome.

If you can't find any Banco tickets, the Cash for Life #1155 is playable and the $1 Go Banana's game is also looking good with all 6 of its $10,000 grand prizes remaining to be claimed and 38% of the total tickets sold.

The big sellers this week were the $3 Horseshoes game and the brand new $5 Jacks are Wild game. Jacks are Wild only has one winner in every 3.86 tickets, which is a little high, but compensates that number with the fact that 73% of its total prizes are greater than the $5 selling price of the ticket. That's good. Players love new games but the preferred strategy is to stay away from them until the odds begin to work in ones favour. Horseshoes sold 16% of its ticket float and Jacks are Wild sold 9%. The best pure play for the jackpot is the $5 Instant 649 game. You have one chance in 57,000 to win $100,000. If you'd be happy with $1000, then Keno #1409 gives you one chance in 36,000 for your $3. The OLG retired the 20X Lucky Game this past week. That game was a disaster for them. Fully one half of the tickets remained to be sold and all of the grand prizes were claimed and had been claimed for the past month. That is sure to prompt a meeting at OLG Headquarters!

I mentioned last week that I was going to discuss the Florida Lottery site. I'm going to push that back a week as this posting has already become too long. I try to keep it short enough that you can read it in less than one minute.

Good Luck.