Scratch card rule I didn't know

I was wandering around the web site for the Texas Lottery and stumbled into their Myth Busters section on scratch cards. Here is one myth that I thought was true:

Quote: Texas Lottery

Myth: The Texas Lottery continues to sell scratch tickets after the top prizes are claimed.

Fact: After all top prizes for a scratch ticket have been claimed, we send a message over the terminals to all retailers telling them to immediately stop selling that game. We then have the remaining tickets for that game picked up.

Source: http://www.txlottery.org/export/sites/lottery/Winners/Player_Protection/mythbusters/

This would slightly improve the odds of the player who just blindly buys scratch cards without checking first the distribution of remaining prizes, which the player can do. Let's call this player a "blind player." For example, on this Lucky Ticket game you can see that 8 of the 23 $3,000 prizes have already been claimed (as of this posting).

If my calculus is right, the average of the maximum of n random numbers independently and uniformly distributed from 0 to 1 is n/(n+1).

How much does this increase the players return for the blind player? I show it to be (top prize)/(total tickets). For example, for the Lucky Ticket game has:

Top prize: $3,000
Total tickets: 11,133,600

Additional return: 3000/11,133,600 = 0.002646436.

What I find remarkable is this formula holds true not matter how many top prize tickets were printed.

I do not know the policy in other states on discarding tickets where all the big winners have been claimed. I searched the California Lottery web site, but couldn't find anything that addresses this question. However, I saw that every active game they have has at least one top prize outstanding.

As always, I welcome all comments, questions, and especially corrections.

The question for the survey is what do you think of this?

The michigan lottery continues to sell them.

https://www.michiganlottery.com/instant_games_info#remaining_prizes

I count 21 of the 84 where the top prizes have been found.

P.S. I vote "lottery is for suckers!"

In Washington it's up to the retailer. I suspect that a retailer who sells through a series and has delivered all the big prizes wouldn't get any further sales on that series so they may as well remove it. Washington also allows a single player to reserve a series for themselves. Usually they do this when they eyeball the bucket and see there are not a lot of tickets left but a lot of big prizes still on the flare. In other words, they're APing the pull-tabs.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=230-14&full=true

Found an article from 2008:

"About half of the 42 states that have lotteries (43 with Washington, D.C.) — including Florida, New Jersey, Michigan and Tennessee — keep selling tickets after the top prizes are gone. The states say the practice is fair because lottery tickets and websites disclose the practice. Also, other prizes are available.

California, New York, Massachusetts and other states now end scratch-off games when top prizes are gone. The changes often followed lawsuits that were unsuccessful but generated bad publicity. The lawsuits "sure changed the way lotteries do business," says attorney Rob Carey, who filed suits in California, Colorado, Arizona and Washington. "

from lottery post dot com

It seems none of the lawsuits were successful but it was enough of a hit that some states changed their ways while others argued they were still fair since you can check online.

I think the California lottery started a "second chance" drawing, where folks could register their losing tickets in another drawing in order to make post jackpot sales more palatable.

I don't know what the big bruhaha is about the practice, as long as the number of winning tickets still available is accurate and readily available. If the $5,000 "jackpot" was gone, but you still had a 1 in three chance of winning something between $500 and $1, I think folks would still find entertainment value in taking a chance for a smaller prize.

This whole topic seems interesting and has me thinking many questions...

When I buy a lottery ticket, am I not somehow entering in to a contract with the state lottery that says "I'm paying $1, and I have X/Y change to win the top price of $Z?" Essentially, it would make the cards themselves false advertising if the top prizes were gone, would it not? If they're all gone, how can you sell a card that says "You could win $5,000!" when in fact you have 0% chance?

Next, Wiz you talk about the "blind player." Do they only list the results for their top box prizes? What they had to list the results of every prize, and thus you could summarize how many tickets have been bought. Therefor, if you know they have 10,000,000 tickets, and 8,000,000 of them are gone BUT the top prizes still remain, I'm sure that would drive up the player edge a LOT more, correct? Couldn't you essentially "vulture" them then?

EXAMPLE
On the site for the Lucky Ticket the Wiz posted if you add up all of the "winners" (including the essential 'push' $1 winner) that adds up to 563,184 tickets. If there was a way to find out how many TOTAL tickets have been sold (say there's an additional 5 million LOSERS), then that would dramatically increase the player odds.

I do not like how their site says "Guaranteed $70 in prizes per packet" where a packet is 150 cards. That tells me the packets are NOT random and thus the winners are placed in to certain packets... or at least that there's a computer program that is set to print the tickets and NOT let any 150 tickets go by without $70 worth of prizes. It's just something else that shows it's "not random" which would make all of our "random number calculations" invalid. Well, at least for individual packet calculations. Not necessarily overall calculations.

Does that Romes guy have an 'off switch'?
I'm afraid he might have a meltdown or sumptin'.....<<<<<<<..just a joke, no foul, no harm.....

Quote: Romes

When I buy a lottery ticket, am I not somehow entering in to a contract with the state lottery that says "I'm paying $1, and I have X/Y change to win the top price of $Z?" Essentially, it would make the cards themselves false advertising if the top prizes were gone, would it not? If they're all gone, how can you sell a card that says "You could win $5,000!" when in fact you have 0% chance?

To play the devil's advocate, the lottery would probably say you are welcome to check their web site for a count of how many of each win has been redeemed. So you have the same information they do. So, they would probably argue that you can infer your odds are x/y based only on the number of prizes in the whole roll, except for the first ticket sold.

Quote:

Next, Wiz you talk about the "blind player." Do they only list the results for their top box prizes? What they had to list the results of every prize, and thus you could summarize how many tickets have been bought. Therefor, if you know they have 10,000,000 tickets, and 8,000,000 of them are gone BUT the top prizes still remain, I'm sure that would drive up the player edge a LOT more, correct? Couldn't you essentially "vulture" them then?

Yes! I know a forum members who used to do just that. I hope he will come out of the woodwork to post about it. There are some downsides to this potential AP:

1. A sold but unclaimed winner will not be known by the Lottery and will make it look like your chances are better than they really are.
2. Any perceived advantage play is towards the end of run. That will mean there is a shortage of such cards, making them difficult to find anybody who sells them.
3. The perceived advantage plays are generally on the high-denomination games, so your volatility is huge.

Quote:

I do not like how their site says "Guaranteed $70 in prizes per packet" where a packet is 150 cards. That tells me the packets are NOT random and thus the winners are placed in to certain packets... or at least that there's a computer program that is set to print the tickets and NOT let any 150 tickets go by without $70 worth of prizes. It's just something else that shows it's "not random" which would make all of our "random number calculations" invalid. Well, at least for individual packet calculations. Not necessarily overall calculations.

That doesn't bother me. I also don't think it really affects the player experience either. Agreed, it seems contrived and un-random, but I think the type of people who play the lottery don't care.

BTW, I've done some consulting work for a pull-tab maker, which are the same thing as scratch cards, but you pull a piece of paper instead of scratching. He would generally have me put in two big prizes in a batch, and one of them was always towards the end. I complained loudly that it wasn't fair but he replied, "I never said it was."

Quote: Wizard

...BTW, I've done some consulting work for a pull-tab maker, which are the same thing as scratch cards, but you pull a piece of paper instead of scratching. He would generally have me put in two big prizes in a batch, and one of them was always towards the end. I complained loudly that it wasn't fair but he replied, "I never said it was."

Wow... When does "Pseudo-Random" become "Non-Random"?

Quote: Wizard

...Yes! I know a forum members who used to do just that. I hope he will come out of the woodwork to post about it. There are some downsides to this potential AP:

1. A sold but unclaimed winner will not be known by the Lottery and will make it look like your chances are better than they really are.
2. Any perceived advantage play is towards the end of run. That will mean there is a shortage of such cards, making them difficult to find anybody who sells them.
3. The perceived advantage plays are generally on the high-denomination games, so your volatility is huge...

This made me think. I suppose another problem would be "how often is the website updated?" Someone could get a scratcher on Monday and not scratch it for a few days, or not claim it for a few days, or etc, etc, etc. Thus the results on the site are partial to some forms of "lag" in the reporting.

Yes, of course the edge on the next play in a scratch ticket or pull tab series fluctuates as tickets come out. But that's no different than blackjack or any other countable game...

Quote: MathExtremist

Yes, of course the edge on the next play in a scratch ticket or pull tab series fluctuates as tickets come out. But that's no different than blackjack or any other countable game...

I think a solution to the problem would be to simply not publish in-progress results.

Quote: Wizard

I think a solution to the problem would be to simply not publish in-progress results.

Much like the casinos... why should they care? The top prizes are going to be hit no matter what, and to boot they'll be hit in the same order (cards are already in 'packs' and shipped to retailer locations). If anything the "AP's" of this realm would speed up the process of each game so they could move on to the next.

Thus, the "AP's" would be doing them a favor?

Quote: Wizard

I think a solution to the problem would be to simply not publish in-progress results.

The problem with this is, if the state is selling tickets and advertising a prize that cannot be won, it is just asking for a "deceptive advertising" lawsuit.

Even with McDonald's Monopoly, when somebody wins the million dollars, they (usually) advertise this, and remind everybody that there are still prizes worth up to $50,000 available. This has the added advantage of showing that the grand prizes can be won - something that McDonald's needs to do in light of the fraud that took place in the game's first few years.

Quote: ThatDonGuy

The problem with this is, if the state is selling tickets and advertising a prize that cannot be won, it is just asking for a "deceptive advertising" lawsuit.

Good point. A possible way around it is to word the tickets carefully to indicate the number in the printing and add a disclaimer that the "actual odds may vary" depending on what tickets were already sold. A downside is Lottery employees with the right access could see when a game was ripe for a jackpot and steal it from recreational players. Everybody should have access to the same information, in a perfect world.

In other news, I wrote to the California Lottery about what they do when there are no big winners left in a game:

Quote: Wiz

Hello. What happens with a scratch card game when all of the largest prize tickets have been claimed? Do you still sell the rest of the tickets or throw them away? Thank you.

Quote: California Lottery

Dear Michael,

Thank you for contacting us. If the game is popular we will still sell the games. Not all prizes need to be claimed prior to end a scratcher game. If the scratchers are seasonal or want to make room for new games in the same price category, we may choose to end the game early.

Best Regards,

Customer Service – CA Lottery (8668)

I don't temeber the exact state, it's somewhere in way to Biloxi going south from Virginia - so either Tennessee or miss , they sell pull tabs at the gas station, I was S clueless I bought 20 dollars just to see what they were, apparently they are classified as prepaid phone cards since they all have like 1-5 minutes of phone time with them.... I drove off and looked at them about an hour later when I went to eat- I was shocked when I won 50 dollars and went to another gas station to cash it only to be told that they are unique to the store I bought it at, I have no clue where I was so I was out of luck.... Lesson Learned

Quote: Wizard

Good point. A possible way around it is to word the tickets carefully to indicate the number in the printing and add a disclaimer that the "actual odds may vary" depending on what tickets were already sold. A downside is Lottery employees with the right access could see when a game was ripe for a jackpot and steal it from recreational players. Everybody should have access to the same information, in a perfect world.

In other news, I wrote to the California Lottery about what they do when there are no big winners left in a game:

"A possible way around"? It might be a little bit late for last months tickets.....

Quote: Wizardofnothing

I don't temeber the exact state, it's somewhere in way to Biloxi going south from Virginia - so either Tennessee or miss , they sell pull tabs at the gas station, I was S clueless I bought 20 dollars just to see what they were, apparently they are classified as prepaid phone cards since they all have like 1-5 minutes of phone time with them.... I drove off and looked at them about an hour later when I went to eat- I was shocked when I won 50 dollars and went to another gas station to cash it only to be told that they are unique to the store I bought it at, I have no clue where I was so I was out of luck.... Lesson Learned

Yeah. I've designed "phone card" pull tabs before. The way they get around the law is that the transaction is to buy a phone card and as a bonus you get to play a pull-tab game. In reality, nobody ever bothers to use the phone cards.