We can only do the analysis of the games posted on the NH lottery website. Finding the games is a whole other challenge. Here's our reasons why we post all games in our reports:
We consistently get the same set of questions from new subsribers….they go something like this:
“Hey you have XYZ game listed as #1 but that game is no longer for sale…..my retailer says that game has ended! What’s going on….your report is wrong!”
Then, the person writing gets upset and assumes that ScratchSmarter is some sort of scam……..
HOLD ON – let me explain what is going on here – this is probably the most important thing we’ve learned about scratch off tickets since we started. And it’s a bit of an UGLY truth:
Some state lotteries PULL GAMES before all of the top prizes have been awarded!
WHAT?!?!
Yes – It’s true. The lotteries have laws around what games to SELL, but they have no laws saying they have to award ALL the prizes for every game they sell! So they use the trick of PULLING games when they’ve made enough profit from them.
Here’s what we’ve found: across the nation, for every state where we do our SmartFactor analysis, almost ALL states use the strategy of ‘pulling games’ to increase their profits.
They will pull a game from retailer shelves before all the tickets are sold. We can only assume that this happens when they’ve made enough of a profit on an individual game.
Basically, they sell all of the non-winning tickets and the big winners could still be sitting in a warehouse somewhere – NEVER to be sold and NEVER to be claimed!
We usually start to see games being pulled from retailers when our SmartFactor rating hits a 2.5 – 3.0 or above. This means that the odds of winning a top prize have improved 2.5 to 3 times the original odds.
When that happens, we usually see the state start to yank the remaining tickets off of the shelves so you cannot win one of the remaining big prizes!
And worse yet, the retailers can only sell you the tickets they have in stock, so they simply tell you ‘that game is over!”
They don’t care why it’s over, they just want to sell you a ticket they have in stock, make their 5% commission, move on, and hope you buy something else (other than a lottery ticket) in their store. They just can’t be bothered with important details about the tickets they’re selling for a measly 5% margin.
We’re giving you the card count for every game, now you just have to go on a hunt to find the VERY BEST game you can find!
Just because the lottery is pulling the games doesn’t mean there still aren’t tickets for sale, somewhere in your area.
Look around and try to find them. IF you can’t find them, move down our report to the next best game on the list and play that one!
BUT ONLY PLAY GAMES THAT ARE above a 1.0 smart factor.
I’m really sorry to have shared this terrible news with you, but when you’re buying scratchers, it is a “buyer beware” marketplace and the state and your retailers are NOT out to make it easy for you to win.
Remember, LUCK IS NOT ENOUGH!
Article #2:
Buyer beware- Lottery’s dirty secret
Before you buy your next ticket – please take a minute to read this:
Scratch off tickets / Scratchers / Instant games – whatever you call them, you need to know that they can be very tricky! Actually, the games themselves, usually, are straight forward – you scratch them and you see if you won or lost! The state lottery that issues these games and the rules that govern those games are where things get tricky!
First – your state’s lottery commission is NOT in the business of trying to make you or anyone else rich. They’re in the business of making money for the state. They do it VERY well. In fact, in 2011, we pulled all of the financial reports from every state selling scratchers and, across the country, more than $32 BILLION in revenue was generated. That was as much money as Powerball and Megamillions generated that year, combined! The lotteries want to KEEP as much of that money as they can, and they have a few strategies they use to maximize that money!
The first strategy is: SELL ALL OF THE TICKETS!
The second strategy is: STOP Selling all of the TICKETS!
Doesn’t make sense? Well – follow along – they use these two strategies on each individual game based on how much money each game has made for them.
They use the first strategy “SELL ALL THE TICKETS” when they print a game and all of the top prizes get won EARLY in the release of the game. In other words, they have to try to sell all of the tickets where there are NO top prizes available to win!
The second strategy: “STOP Selling all of the TICKETS” is used when a game has been for sale for a while, has sold a lot of tickets, but there are still some REALLY big prizes unclaimed.
So, BUYER BEWARE when you’re looking at those scratch off games.
