If I may join this rant, what drives me nuts is when the retailer of a high volume store has no interest in engaging in any conversation about anything regarding the games. Any games. Its not that is busy at the time, there is a noticeable disregard for the lottery buyer, wasting his/her money and thinking there is any better odds with any particular scratch game. I had asked if the 30 dollar scratcher offers any better odds at any bigger prizes than a two dollar one. I see guys buy multiple 20 and 30 dollar tickets. I once bought 20 of the one dollar scratchers and one ticket hit for 500, i was over the moon, thought I had figured out a strategy - been chasing a hit like that ever since. The retailer was more shocked than I was!
The mere fact that out of 6 million or so at first printing, distributed over the vastness of a state like New York, the chance that you can get the ticket from one of the many rolls of a retailer that is one of the regular places you frequent makes the odds incalculable. Its not one or what ever out of 6 million. I would not be going to a store up near Niagara Falls or in Albany. I don't play in NYC, where tens of thousands are concentrated. The big ticket has to happen to be in the right roll in the few stores in my travels, I know you all know that. Then, the high volume of a store means someone else is likely to get that, not that the turn over keeps the odds "fresh". So why do I still hand over a few bucks? That big hit I once got. The very first time I scratched a ten dollar ticket I got 200 bucks. Totally considered it a throw away of ten bucks, and BAM! I can understand the retail clerk, being a kid, being spacey about the question of whether a higher priced scratcher presents better odds at even just the 50, 100, 500 dollar prizes, forget the jackpots. They can shrug their shoulders. But the owners, the old sages that are making the lion's share pf the profits for years from all the addicted hardcore lottery players of many levels, for them to scoff at the question, or tell me that I have no better chance at winning anything from a 30 buck one as from a 2 dollar one, they don't appreciate the money they have rolling in. Then the system reserves the right to print more, add to the brand without notice, sell them long after the top prizes are won, and with many retailers going out of business or losing their licenses, so many rolls are simply destroyed instead of redistributed to the collective.
I prefer the live "balls in the air" games, where anyone in any location has the same mathematical odds, and it's as fair a method of drawing as has been devised so far. But the lure of the cards that promise its "loaded" with 50s or 100s, and the wall of posted winners still get a couple tries out of me.