Things didn’t go the way I wanted making $447 back from my $1025 initial investment. I told myself I’d quit the game if I didn’t end up up but I still want to keep on playing, which is a dangerous slope. Either way here are my some of my results

California Lottery:

$10 Ticket Scratchers

$250 Million Cash Spectacular:

Ticket Wins: 2 (44,40)   $$$ Wins: $15 (25) $15 (20)

$1 Million Fortune:

Ticket Wins: 2 (23,26)   $$$ Wins: $15 (23) $20 (22) $15 (40)

$ 5 Ticket Scratchers

Fantastic 10’s:

Ticket Wins: 4 (19,61,1,28) $$$ Wins: $6 (35) $10 (18) $6 (66) $15 (01)

Triple 777’s:

Ticket Wins: 3 (50,6,19)

Black Pearls:

Ticket Wins: 1 (68) $$$ Wins: $20 (57) $15 (35)

California Black:

Ticket Wins: 3 (41,21,26) $$$ Wins: $15 (07) $6 (08) $30 (40) $6 (53) $6 (14)

Hot Streak:

Ticket Wins: 1 (35) $$$ Wins: $6 (60) $10 (74) $6 (56) $10 (32) $6 (23) $6 (29)

Strike It Rich:

$$$ Wins: $10 (71) $10 (69) $20 (75)

Set For Life:

Ticket Wins: 2 (33,66) $$$ Wins: $6 (77)

Mega Crossword:

$$$ Wins: $15 (26)

Jumbo Bucks:

$$$ Wins: $10 (28)

I swear california scratcher is the <snip>tiest of all the states. Those lottery officials are seriously stingy to the point even the set for life scratcher only pays out  to only 20 years.

I've only been scratching for about a month now...

Biggest wins:

Strike It Rich: $100 

Black Pearls: $50

Didn't pay attention to the ticket numbers back when I started.

 The first time I decided to purchase a bunch of randoms I spent exactly $500 and returned $514 which is pretty decent as you are only suppossed to average 40% of your investment.

Does anyone happen to know any ticket numbers for specific games that tend to hit?

If there's any scratchers out there from Oxnard/Ventura I'd like to hear from you!

Started playing about 8 months back. I usually play only some of the $5 and the $10 ones. So far maximum I have hit is $50 which is a disgrace. My buys are spread in Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood, Studio City , Sherman Oaks and Anaheim areas.

I will be dropping another $40 on $10s and $5 tomorrow. A collegue of mine played 11 months , $20 each week and he hit a $1 million last week in the $250 million scratcher...very lucky guy !

Also RJSushi , I am not aware of any ticket numbers for specific games that tend to hit.

That's awesome for your friend. I hope he spends his winnings wisely. If I ever win the big prize, hopefully soon, I'm gonna settle down and start gambling with properties instead.

I used to live in North Hollywood and worked in Sherman Oaks. You probably already know about Porto's in Burbank but if you don't try the potato balls, they're my favorite.

Yesterday's plays

$250 Million Spec : loss (37)

Black Pearls: free ticket (07)

I probably should have bought a few more black pearls but only had a fiver to spare.

Going to Arizona for a week and will buy a book of something over there, can't wait.

Why would you play all those low return, small $$$ tickets???

Everyone knows that higher ticket price = higher return.

Here in AZ the best we can sell you is Extreme Green for $20. that only has a $250k prize.

I get so mad when a 10$ ticket pays back 15$. I see you have a few of them.

I live in Toluca Lake neighborhood near Pass ave and Riverside for past 12 years..Been renting and my aim is to win big and buy a home. Yes Portos is about 0.5 miles from my crib :-)

Today's play

4 $10 Fortunes - return $30

2 $10 $250 million scratcher - $15 + 1 free ticket.

Not bad. Dropped $60 and got $55 effectively back.

I wanted to play a wide variety of tix, even the lower ones just for the fun of it...Playing only the more expensive tix and getting killed by them made me want to try out the lower ones to see if they were paying out. I'm going to Arizona next week and am planning to buy a roll of $5 tix, any advice on which to buy?

mnsweeps

not to shabby at all...I'm glad you were able to walk away. If I scratched those tix at the store I would've payed out and gone back to machine scratching for more wins.

Have you had any larger luck on those $10 tix? So far, I've scratched 31 of them and the best win so far was only for $20.

Better luck next time )))

The max I have got on the $10 is $50 twice but nothing beyond that. Interestingly I got a 20X in one of the Fortune scratcher but then I found a $1 under it...DUH ! Just $20 plus a number matching for $10...so total $30 on that one tix...

Was cashing winnings today and couldn't help buy play since I saw a Jumbo bucks, Set for life, and Hot streak at the end of their rolls. Not good so far on the Jumbo bucks and Set for Life...Gonna scratch the Hot streak's later.

Set For Life:

74: -

75: $6

76: Ticket

77: -

78: Ticket

79: - 

I thought I was at least gonna get my money back on these. Darn

Jumbo Bucks killed me:

Tickets 70 - 79:

72: Ticket

78: $6

The Set For Life game is almost ending and a clerk told me they took his last roll away. I wonder if they are pulling them to avoid paying out the remaining 10 top prizes as one of them was recently redeemed in the past week.

Yucky so far. I hopd the Hot Streak tickets live up to their name )))

seems completely random to me. Picked two rolls of ultimate riches and the results were:

1st roll- Series 1178341

Ticket 14 was a loss, but check out from 16-22 all losing. Ticket #27 was the break point. In total for the 1st roll, spent $600 but won $740.

2nd roll- Series 1178342

2nd roll was a complete bust...ticket 14 was also a loss and only won $240.

Total spent was $1200 and got $980 back. Wasnt too bad, was able to play 60 scratchers for approx $3.66 each.

I'm not talking about ticket number I'm talking about the numbers you uncover in the playing area.

My bad. 

But I do get a lot of players who want to know all the numbers.  Some want high numbers, others low, some want even, others want odd.

The odds have been posted on the website for the new $30 anniversary scrather:

Odds and Available Prizes

At least it's pretty good it doesn't have break even $30 winners.

looks like it pays out around 81-82% which is very good for a $30 game and yes agree w no break even prizes that are not tickets on this game know that was done on ultimate riches

I saw a sample ticket and it said the cash odds were 1:4.66; I was afraid this was going to be peppered with free tickets and $30 cash break-even prizes. But although it looks like the ticket thing came true, I'm glad this ticket didn't pull an Ultimate Riches/5MJP/Million $$ Match and come loaded with break-even prizes. I'd still play sparingly, given the high cost of the ticket.

What does the 81-82% stand for?  Should be 54?

the percentage of sales that are given back to the players in the form of prizes

Awesome that you are quick with these things, it I checked the CA Lottery website the last two days and its not there anymore. Not sure if you run a web crawler on the lottery website to notice subtle changes. It will be out soon enough next week.

Just like ChaCha33 stated, it will be mostly break even with the TICKET/$40 (slightly better than break even cash), 1 out of every 3.5 tickets and an occasional win of a few hundred dollars for those who are able to play at least 100 of these tickets during its life span.

I have been holding off on the $20 games this month and a half due to this as well as SuperLotto Plus being so high (it reset this month), and I like this $30 game structure since it comes with $100/$200/$400/$500 prize structure. I will still play sparingly since I do not have much disposable income to play with. I'd rather play one of these than 3 $10s or 6 $5s, and I still do not like the $20 games.

Thanks for doing the calculations for us! We'd used to have someone do it for us couple of years ago.

The CA Lottery reports 80% instead of the 81.4% you've calculated since they expect retailers to force the customer to play another $30 Ticket rather than giving back $30 in cash to do what they want. Most retailers here give cash back to the players, and the places with kiosks have to give out cash.

If you negate the TICKET prizes from the pool, they will come up with 80% return (still good, almost near the return of MegaBucks jackpot slot machines levels which I believe is in the low 80% range).

Rolled the dice and splurged on the new $30 ticket at the Mobil this morning; a grizzly in the bonus spot and one number match for $20 each; $40 win. If you're going to go for the higher-priced tickets, take this one over any of the $20 tix, but do so sparingly.

I dont get why the commission cant go for more grand prize avialability on that $30 ticket from all the cash cowing they milk from the CA player on a daily basis.

Just 4 grand prize $10mil tickets and 8 for $750k out of the multi million prints circulating all over the state?

Chances are that all those 4 grand prizes are in the same city. 

What an insult to the player.

The last two high denomination games $20 7's Playbook and this $30 30th Anniversary games have 12 million tickets printed compared to the other high end games $5million jackpot (33.6 million), Million $$ Match (24 million), and Ultimate Riches (18 million). These games can probably end quicker, or if the $30 game does well, more tickets will be added on. The regulations state if all top prizes are claimed which there are 4 of them, the remaining games have to be pulled.

All four tickets in the same city? I highly doubt it, maybe at most 2 of them in San Jose. Insult to the player? We'll see if the sales pick up, the players have been voting with their wallets the past few years to cause the state lottery to make changes.

However I find the Million $$ Match to be B.S. since there are THREE (not ONE) top prize tiers, $1/$2/$5 million. The $5 million prizes got claimed so quick, it definitely lower the overall return significantly for those that continue playing it. Who would want to play that game for the final $2 million prize?

Took my first crack at the $30 30th Anniversary game. Bought 2 tickets number 7 and 8, and both were losers...