How to Win on Lottery Tickets

Winning Scratch-Off Tickets

Use the singleton method. Statisticians discovered a statistical quirk in the production of scratch-off tickets, which can double your chances of winning if exploited correctly. Basically, scratch off games operate under the assumption of "randomness," but can't be produced in a truly random way, because the lottery board needs to keep track of how many winning tickets are in circulation.

Buy the correct tickets. Some "match style" or "tic-tac-toe" scratch off tickets are marked with a kind of code you can learn to recognize. Look for the kind of ticket on which you must match "3 in a row" from a given group of amounts. Typically, the outside of the aluminum coating will be marked with seemingly "random" numbers you scratch off to reveal amounts on the inside. If, on a given ticket, game space, you get three $100 amounts, you win the amount listed. These are the games that can be deciphered using the singleton method. They're also typically among the cheapest lottery tickets, and have the lowest payouts, so you can buy several to practice.

Chart the "random" outside numbers that repeat. Look at the numbers that mark the playing space and, for each, count how many times each number repeats on the ticket. Pay close attention to "singletons." These are the "random" numbers that appear only once on the ticket. The digits you're looking for won't be the same--that would mean they would appear more than once. Remember, you're looking for numbers that appear only once.

Mark the ones. On a separate sheet of paper, draw a mock-up of the ticket, filling in "1" in place of the random digit in each space you find a singleton. A group of singletons will signal a winning card 60-90% of the time.

Look for groupings. Depending on the rules of the game you're playing, you might need to look for three in a given space, or three in a row, but typically cards that display this abnormality are statistically more likely to be winners. 60% may not sound like a lot, but the average scratch-off card has a 30% chance of winning, so you've doubled your chances. Over a large group of tickets, this can yield a significant profit.

Develop this technique. Experiment with other scratch off tickets looking for repetitions in the "random" numbers. All of them work on the same principle, and you might be able to discover an anomaly that you can exploit in a particular game. Buy cheap tickets and study them to see what you can come up with.

Winning Powerball Games

Find the expected value. This is a good idea for any lottery game you are considering playing. The expected value refers to the probability of any one outcome, assuming all outcomes are equally probable. Here, the expected value calculates the value of the ticket, if the game was set up fairly so that the revenue gained from the losing tickets would match the winners' profits. In other words, this assumes the powerball lottery works like a fantasy football pool: five people throw in five bucks, the winner gets $25.

Determine the probability of each possible "win." This will depend upon the specific powerball or number game you're playing. If it's a six-digit number that you pick, there are nine possibilities for each position and six different positions. Since each outcome is equally likely, you'll need to calculate a permutation. Alternatively, the odds should be listed in the game's rules.

Multiply the probability by the payout for that win. The probability will be a very small number that you'll add together to determine the expected value. Doing this will result in a negative value. In general, for each $2 you invest in powerball tickets, you can expect $.93 back. Account for any non-cash prizes by taking their cash value into account, and convert any annuities (annual distributions of prize money) into a lump sum for the purposes of this calculation.

Buy tickets that increase the expected value. Specifically, a promotion that adds any percentage chance to the prize pool will make tickets a worthwhile purchase. One example of this was the Missouri Lottery's promotion in the daily Pick 3. Normally a player has a 1/1000 chance of winning a $600 prize, making a $1 ticket worth only $0.60. The promotion was to draw a second winning combination on one randomly selected day of the week. Originally, the drawing to determine whether the bonus would occur that day held six white balls and one orange, but on the last day of the week, all six white balls had been removed, leaving only the orange ball and ensuring a double drawing on the last day. This doubled the value of tickets for that drawing and converted them from an expected 40 percent loss to a 20 percent gain. See table 1 below for how the expected value varied that week.

Look for progressive jackpots. Larger jackpots increase the payouts and therefore the value of a ticket. The value of a large progressive jackpot is very sensitive to the exact rules of the game, so be sure to understand them. The Massachusetts lottery imposed purchase limits after it was discovered that their Cash Win-fail game had a positive expected value after a jackpot was rolled down to increase the payouts for lower level prizes. In the Mega Millions multi-state lottery, jackpots are split equally among all winners who match all numbers. If a player could ensure that he wouldn't have to split the jackpot, Mega Millions becomes a smart bet whenever the jackpot exceeds about $420 million, but this calculation doesn't account for the possibility of a split jackpot. It has been theorized that the ticket buying frenzies as the jackpot rises increases the likelihood of multiple winners sufficiently that the jackpot can never get large enough to give a ticket a positive expected value.

Consider the tax implications. In the United States, gambling winnings are taxable, but gambling losses are only deductible to offset winnings. This legal asymmetry may affect the math. The double draw promotion that resulted in a 20 percent player advantage before tax considerations is only profitable after taxes, provided the player can purchase the hundreds of tickets required to cover a significant fraction of the 1000 outcomes.