Using data to analyze and exploit scratch ticket distrubtionPrev TopicNext Topic

• eihli

  

  California
  United States
  Member #192,345
  September 19, 2018
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Jan 7, 2019, 11:55 am

  ▲▼

  What have you wanted to know about how prizes are distributed, claimed, etc?

  I have a lot of data.

  I need to know what questions to ask.

  I've written some software to automatically get scratchoff data from state's websites each day. That tells me how many tickets are sold each day, how many grand prizes remain, etc...

  One thing I was able to gleam from this data is an answer to the question of "Are grand prizes weighted towards the end of a game?"

  I did this buy calculating the average percentage of total tickets sold for each game and the average percentage of grand prizes sold for each game.

  If it was a fair distribution, you would expect those two to be equal. On average, when 50% of tickets have been sold, 50% of grand prizes will have been sold.

  It was my assumption that grand prizes would be weighted towards the end of games. If they were truly random and if it was possible for all the grand prizes to be sold at the beginning of the game, then states would risk losing money by payout out all their grand prizes at the start of a game and nobody wanting to buy any more tickets.

  The results confirm that assumption.

  average_game_percent_tickets_remain	average_grand_prize_percent_remain
  0.350615711252654	0.380658174097665

   

  Another thing you might find interesting is to see how that compares across different states. Are some states more fair than others in this regard?

  state	num_games	game_tickets_percent_remain	grand_prize_percent_remain
  ar	73	0.3	0.36
  ca	51	0.38	0.39
  la	51	0.38	0.44
  md	54	0.48	0.48
  nj	148	0.26	0.3
  tx	94	0.42	0.42

   

  You'll see New Jersey, Arkansas, and Louisiana are the states that back-weight their grand prizes while California, Texas, and Maryland don't appear to do so. I thought this might be because of the states use different companies to print their tickets, but New Jersey and California both use Scientific Games.

  One thing I've been considering is that California publishes a full list of retailers with data about which are "lucky" and sell large numbers of winning tickets. I thought it might be interesting to see if anything can be figured out from that, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

  Let me know if you have anything you're curious about.
• REDiDrifter

  

  Fort Lauderdale
  United States
  Member #194,976
  January 6, 2019
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Jan 9, 2019, 6:29 pm

  ▲▼

  Hey eihli, your software sounds great very hard to find any of that information in the state of Florida. Couple questions what can you tell me about the Florida scratch Lotto games, remaining prizes lower-tier prizes also, that kind of stuff?  Also I am wondering if you are able to write software that you can use to scan your scratch ticket barcode to see if there a winner or not for the state of Florida? I believe Texas is using some software like that they made an app for it but nothing like that is available for Florida or most other states. Wouldn't it be amazing if we were able to check our scratch tickets from our phones? 

                          RED.iDrifter
• killerwill13

  

  Pensacola
  United States
  Member #187,164
  January 15, 2018
  467 Posts
  Offline
  Jan 9, 2019, 7:17 pm

  ▲▼
  In response to REDiDrifter

  Quote: Originally posted by REDiDrifter on Jan 9, 2019

  Hey eihli, your software sounds great very hard to find any of that information in the state of Florida. Couple questions what can you tell me about the Florida scratch Lotto games, remaining prizes lower-tier prizes also, that kind of stuff?  Also I am wondering if you are able to write software that you can use to scan your scratch ticket barcode to see if there a winner or not for the state of Florida? I believe Texas is using some software like that they made an app for it but nothing like that is available for Florida or most other states. Wouldn't it be amazing if we were able to check our scratch tickets from our phones? 

                          RED.iDrifter

  You’d need to call the FL lottery for an instant liability report. 

   

  Sadly Florida has no plans on any apps for scan ability
• REDiDrifter

  

  Fort Lauderdale
  United States
  Member #194,976
  January 6, 2019
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Jan 9, 2019, 11:44 pm

  ▲▼

  Thanks for that info soo sad...lol .
• MsLottery

  

  0% State Tax State
  United States
  Member #172,902
  February 9, 2016
  18 Posts
  Offline
  Jan 28, 2019, 2:36 am

  ▲▼

  California's app now has the ability to scan scratcher and draw ticks. If the ticket is not a winner the 2nd chance drawing option automatically opens up. I love this new feature.
• MszBacon

  

  United States
  Member #173,494
  March 5, 2016
  49 Posts
  Offline
  Feb 5, 2019, 10:49 pm

  ▲▼

  Hello Eihli,

  Thank you for the information. Can you check the data and any information on Virginia, it would be greatly appreciated.
• nanken

  

  michigan
  United States
  Member #195,818
  February 9, 2019
  1 Post
  Offline
  Feb 14, 2019, 7:50 pm

  ▲▼

  In Michigan we can now scan our tickets using the lottery app on our cell phones.  Can you help with some info on Michigan's instants?  They do post for each game how many the game starts with and how many are left.
• eihli

  

  California
  United States
  Member #192,345
  September 19, 2018
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Mar 1, 2019, 11:05 am

  ▲▼

  Here's Michigan

  Sorry about the formatting. I couldn't find a way to copy and paste that would retain the formatting.

  Eric Ihli

  Game Value Price
  Millionaire's Club 101 $30
  $4,000,000 Mega Bucks 85 $30
  Holiday Dazzle 84 $10
  $150,000,000 Payout 82 $30
  Hit It Big 82 $20
  Multiplier Spectacular 81 $20
  Royal Millions 80 $30
  Classic Black 80 $20
  Deluxe 7's Playbook 80 $20
  Money Money Money 79 $20
  $4,000,000 Winner 79 $30
  Hot Fortune 79 $20
  Diamond Dazzler 79 $20
  $2,000,000 Jackpot 79 $20
  Casino Millions 78 $10
  100X the Cash 78 $20
  Super Bonus Cashword 78 $20
  Lucky 7's Multiplier 77 $10
  50X The Cash 77 $10
  $1,000,000 Gems 77 $10
  Royal Win 76 $10
  Cash 76 $10
  Quick Million 76 $10
  Golden Ticket 76 $10
  $1,000,000 Gold Rush 75 $10
  Golden Ticket II 75 $10
  Triple Million 75 $10
  Triple Bonus Cashword 74 $10
  Tax Free $1,000,000 73 $10
  Holiday Gems 73 $10
  Max Money 72 $30
  Bring on the Bens 71 $5
  White Ice 7's 71 $5
  Platinum 7’s 70 $5
  Full of $500's 70 $5
  20X The Cash 70 $5
  Casino Riches 70 $5
  Loaded 69 $5
  $500,000 Bonus 69 $5
  $500,000 Gold Rush 69 $5
  Cash Club 69 $5
  Quick Riches 69 $5
  Super Bingo 69 $5
  Lucky Streak 69 $5
  Tax Free $500,000 68 $5
  Poker Multiplier 68 $5
  Holiday Magic 67 $5
  Cash Flurries 67 $5
  Lucky 7's Tripler 67 $5
  Wild Bingo 63 $3
  $50,000 Gold Rush 63 $2
  Win for Life 63 $2
  10X The Cash 62 $2
  Diamonds & Gold 62 $2
  Lucky 7's Doubler 62 $2
  Bingo Twist 62 $2
  Quick Winnings 62 $2
  Tax Free $50,000 62 $2
  Double Bonus Cashword 61 $5
  25th Anniversary Wild Time 61 $5
  Unwrap the Cash 61 $2
  Bonus Cashword 61 $3
  Platinum Wild Time 60 $10
  Holiday Lucky Times 12 60 $2
  Cash in a Flash 60 $2
  Electric 8’s 59 $2
  Big Bucks 59 $2
  Multi-Prize Bingo 59 $5
  5X The Cash 59 $1
  Triple Bonus Cashword 58 $10
  Peppermint Payout 56 $5
  Diamond Doubler 56 $1
  Festive $50s 56 $1
  Stocking Stuffer 56 $1
  Cloud 9 55 $1
  Cashword 55 $2
  Sizzlin’ Wild Time 55 $2
  $50,000 Triple Diamonds 53 $2
  10X The Money 52 $2
  Did I Win? 51 $1
  Instant Keno 51 $5
  Tax Free $5,000 48 $1
  Quick Cash 48 $1
  Lucky Wild Time 39 $2
  Cashword 29 $2
• QueenofNumbers

  

  Painesville,ohio
  United States
  Member #193,373
  October 28, 2018
  170 Posts
  Offline
  Mar 5, 2019, 8:47 am

  ▲▼
  In response to eihli

  Quote: Originally posted by eihli on Jan 7, 2019

  What have you wanted to know about how prizes are distributed, claimed, etc?

  I have a lot of data.

  I need to know what questions to ask.

  I've written some software to automatically get scratchoff data from state's websites each day. That tells me how many tickets are sold each day, how many grand prizes remain, etc...

  One thing I was able to gleam from this data is an answer to the question of "Are grand prizes weighted towards the end of a game?"

  I did this buy calculating the average percentage of total tickets sold for each game and the average percentage of grand prizes sold for each game.

  If it was a fair distribution, you would expect those two to be equal. On average, when 50% of tickets have been sold, 50% of grand prizes will have been sold.

  It was my assumption that grand prizes would be weighted towards the end of games. If they were truly random and if it was possible for all the grand prizes to be sold at the beginning of the game, then states would risk losing money by payout out all their grand prizes at the start of a game and nobody wanting to buy any more tickets.

  The results confirm that assumption.

  average_game_percent_tickets_remain	average_grand_prize_percent_remain
  0.350615711252654	0.380658174097665

   

  Another thing you might find interesting is to see how that compares across different states. Are some states more fair than others in this regard?

  state	num_games	game_tickets_percent_remain	grand_prize_percent_remain
  ar	73	0.3	0.36
  ca	51	0.38	0.39
  la	51	0.38	0.44
  md	54	0.48	0.48
  nj	148	0.26	0.3
  tx	94	0.42	0.42

   

  You'll see New Jersey, Arkansas, and Louisiana are the states that back-weight their grand prizes while California, Texas, and Maryland don't appear to do so. I thought this might be because of the states use different companies to print their tickets, but New Jersey and California both use Scientific Games.

  One thing I've been considering is that California publishes a full list of retailers with data about which are "lucky" and sell large numbers of winning tickets. I thought it might be interesting to see if anything can be figured out from that, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

  Let me know if you have anything you're curious about.

  Hello 

  Is there anyway to tell what area the biggest prizes are like which jurisdiction has the biggest winner

  congrats to all future winners let's win win win win
• eihli

  

  California
  United States
  Member #192,345
  September 19, 2018
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Mar 5, 2019, 11:39 pm

  ▲▼

  It depends on the state. Pennsylvania has a map where you can click on a country and see how much money has been paid out from that county. It also shows you the name of the person who claimed the prize.

  One intention I've had is to see if there is a particular name winning more than their fair share of a particular game. I'd have to adjust for how common names are. They don't give people's full names. They'll give first name last initial. So I would need a way to determine, for example, that 0.2% of the population has the name "William C." and given that I expect 0.2% of prizes to be claimed by someone with that name (assuming all names are equally likely to be playing the lottery). Well if William C is winning 5% of all the money from a particular county, that's a significant enough amount over what I expect that it would be worth digging into.

  So short answer: it depends on the state, but yes. I'll let you know when I get around to it.
• oate

  

  United States
  Member #193,169
  October 22, 2018
  489 Posts
  Offline
  Mar 8, 2019, 3:16 am

  ▲▼
  In response to eihli

  Quote: Originally posted by eihli on Jan 7, 2019

  What have you wanted to know about how prizes are distributed, claimed, etc?

  I have a lot of data.

  I need to know what questions to ask.

  I've written some software to automatically get scratchoff data from state's websites each day. That tells me how many tickets are sold each day, how many grand prizes remain, etc...

  One thing I was able to gleam from this data is an answer to the question of "Are grand prizes weighted towards the end of a game?"

  I did this buy calculating the average percentage of total tickets sold for each game and the average percentage of grand prizes sold for each game.

  If it was a fair distribution, you would expect those two to be equal. On average, when 50% of tickets have been sold, 50% of grand prizes will have been sold.

  It was my assumption that grand prizes would be weighted towards the end of games. If they were truly random and if it was possible for all the grand prizes to be sold at the beginning of the game, then states would risk losing money by payout out all their grand prizes at the start of a game and nobody wanting to buy any more tickets.

  The results confirm that assumption.

  average_game_percent_tickets_remain	average_grand_prize_percent_remain
  0.350615711252654	0.380658174097665

   

  Another thing you might find interesting is to see how that compares across different states. Are some states more fair than others in this regard?

  state	num_games	game_tickets_percent_remain	grand_prize_percent_remain
  ar	73	0.3	0.36
  ca	51	0.38	0.39
  la	51	0.38	0.44
  md	54	0.48	0.48
  nj	148	0.26	0.3
  tx	94	0.42	0.42

   

  You'll see New Jersey, Arkansas, and Louisiana are the states that back-weight their grand prizes while California, Texas, and Maryland don't appear to do so. I thought this might be because of the states use different companies to print their tickets, but New Jersey and California both use Scientific Games.

  One thing I've been considering is that California publishes a full list of retailers with data about which are "lucky" and sell large numbers of winning tickets. I thought it might be interesting to see if anything can be figured out from that, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

  Let me know if you have anything you're curious about.

  That sounds like a nice tool for analyzing an in-progress scratchers game. One thing that might mess up your analysis is that "claimed" does not mean the same thing as purchased, as a CA lottery employee confirmed to me by email.

  Prizes under $600 are typically claimed soon after purchase because you can get your money there in the store, whereas the $600+ prizes could be claimed quite a while after purchase because it takes time and effort to get to the claim center, and people generally don't use the mail option to redeem tickets and scratchers here. So when the lottery website shows that, say, 5 out of 10 of the top prizes have been "claimed" it could very well be that all of them have already been purchased, but only half the winners made their way to a claim center. (For the small prizes, "claimed" and "purchased" should be about equal.)

  Only my hairdresser knows for sure.
• Shingos

  

  Maple Grove, MN
  United States
  Member #196,539
  March 10, 2019
  1 Post
  Offline
  Mar 10, 2019, 10:48 am

  ▲▼

  Any chance you could do it for Minnesota?
• eihli

  

  California
  United States
  Member #192,345
  September 19, 2018
  8 Posts
  Offline
  Mar 12, 2019, 11:13 pm

  ▲▼

  This is a great point and something I can confirm. Percentage-wise, prizes over $600 lag behind prizes under $600. For example, that comes to about 6-8 percentage points for most California games. You can simply adjust prizes > $600 down by that average and still have an accurate expected value calculation.