How To Win at Scratch Offs or At Least Increase Your Odds

• Buying multiple cards of the same game can give you more of an edge.
• Look at your state lottery’s website for updates on whether or not anyone has won the big prizes.
• Check to see if an error can still work in your favor.

Scratch off lottery tickets can be a fun way to earn some quick cash without having to spend too much money upfront. You might drop $20 occasionally on some scratch cards while you’re at the gas station, and the chances are that you might win a small prize. But honestly, we’re all buying these tickets because we want to win big.

Depending on which scratcher you buy, the odds of you winning a prize can vary. Some tickets have really favorable odds for winning, like 1 in 3 or 1 in 5. Of course, that’s just for winning any amount, with small prizes being the face value of the card. The odds of finding a larger prize in the thousands or millions are obviously much higher.

Whether you’re looking to win your $20 back or you’re chasing that jackpot, we have you covered. We’ve put together a list of tips and tricks to increase your chances of winning on scratchers. While these games dole out their winnings based on luck, these tips can help improve your odds of winning scratch offs.

1. Always Set (and Stick to) a Budget

While this rule doesn’t impact how often you’ll win, it does keep you from losing too much money. This is supposed to be for fun, after all, and not bankrupt you while you’re on a mission to become a millionaire.

Just like with gambling at an online casino, you need to set aside a specific amount every week or every month and make sure that you stay within that budget, no matter what. You never want to gamble more than you can afford to.

2. Don’t Buy the Cheapest Scratch Cards

You can find so many different games and types of scratch cards that it can be hard to choose which one to play. While it can be tempting to buy the cheapest tickets to get the most play out of your set budget, you don’t want to buy these scratchers. They’re cheaper because their prize pools are lower.

Instead, you’d be better off buying the higher-priced scratch offs (but obviously buying fewer per week or month so that you’ll stay within your budget). Just like many things in life, it’s better to go for quality than quantity. You have a better shot at winning the big money by splurging on the higher-priced scratchers.

3. Research the Available Scratch Off Games Before Buying

Lottery scratchers will often advertise their jackpots in their titles, like “$250,000 Crossword” or “$100,000 Bingo Tripler.” However, unless the game has only just been released, the chance exists that someone else might have already won that jackpot.

Nothing prevents these lotteries from still selling tickets even if the big advertised prize is no longer available. Of course, you may still be able to win the smaller prizes, but that’s less enticing.

State lottery websites will actually publish information about which lottery prizes are still available. Visit the lottery website for the state where you’re buying your scratch cards, look for the scratch offs section, and go through the different games and the prizes that remain. Try to buy your scratchers just after the lottery website has updated their lists so that you’re working off of the most recent data.

For example, if you live in New Jersey, you can look up the different scratch off games on the New Jersey Lottery website. Under the “Active” tab, you can see which scratchers are still in play and which ones still have their top prize remaining. You don’t want to bother playing a lottery game that’s already paid out the big prize.

4. Buy Multiple Scratchers at Once

To better your odds of winning at scratch offs, you should buy groups of the same cards. Prizes on scratch off tickets are not wholly random — instead, they tend to be spaced throughout the rolls.

This is because manufacturers have only a certain dollar amount they can disperse for a game. If the printed prizes were truly random, the manufacturer could award millions of dollars in prizes just through random chance.

Scratch off manufacturers have to limit the number of winning cards to a set amount, such as 250 winners in every 1,000-card roll. This means that buying in bulk may increase your chances of finding a winning ticket.

However, there will still be some randomness within that roll’s prize distribution — it’s not like every fifth card will be a winner, so this tactic is not a guarantee that you’ll automatically win.

5. Stick With the Same Game

We briefly mentioned it above, but make sure that you’re buying from the same scratch off game every time you buy in bulk. Don’t spread your budget across multiple different games, or you might be spending your funds on a ton of different losing scratch cards.

Your probability of winning actually does increase every time you buy more tickets from the same scratch off game, in a very simple way. Let’s say that there are 1 million tickets in a given game:

• If you buy five tickets, your odds of winning are 1 in 200,000.
• If you buy 10 tickets, your odds of winning increase to 1 in 100,000.
• If you buy 20 tickets, your odds increase further to 1 in 50,000.

6. Look for Games With a Guaranteed Winner

Some scratch off games offer a guaranteed winner per roll of tickets. Though you won’t necessarily know if the winning ticket has already been claimed, you can give yourself an edge by asking which number the next ticket on the roll has before you buy. Oftentimes, scratch cards are numbered sequentially, starting with 000. If the ticket number is still low, there’s a lower likelihood of that winning ticket already being found (by someone else).

7. Get Your Scratch Off Officially Checked

While you might not have hit the jackpot on a given scratch card, you should still take it to an official lottery vendor to get your card officially checked. Maybe you had missed a winning combination or there was an error on the card. Either way, you could be eligible for some sort of payment, even if it’s small.

8. Understand That It’s Still Down to Luck

Just like playing slot machines, you might try all of these tips and tricks to winning scratch offs, but you’re still at the mercy of Lady Luck. Some scratch off games might offer guaranteed winners, but someone else might have already gotten there before you. You might buy 20 tickets at once and still hit a losing streak.

Remember that playing the lottery is meant to be for fun rather than to be your strategy for retiring early. If you think the odds of winning the lottery are too high, you can try online casino games instead. Other games of luck like online baccarat have rather favorable odds, with the house edge being only just over 1%.

Stories of Big Scratch Off Winners

Some people have had incredible luck when it comes to scratch offs, and they’re honestly the people we probably all hope to be like one day.

A $4 Million Birthday Gift

In 2014, Chicago teenager Deisi Ocampo turned 19 and received two $100 Million Money Mania scratch cards as a gift from her father. Her first ticket didn’t win her anything, but the second ticket was a big winner. Her birthday gift ended up paying out $4 million!

She said that she planned to use her winnings to buy her family a new house and to pay for her education.

Best Friends Splitting the Winnings

Two 19-year-old best friends decided to split the cost of two $30 tickets for Jumbo Bucks Titanium scratch offs in 2021. The first one was a loser, but the second ticket won them a cool $3 million.

Tennessee natives Wyatt Close and Brandon Thompson said that they planned to invest the money, with Close saying he hoped to buy a home in the future.

Third Time’s the Charm

In 2022, an anonymous New Jersey man bought three scratchers on the same day, and they were all winners. First, he bought a scratch off while out grabbing his coffee and a muffin. After winning $50 on that ticket, he bought another and won $100.

Riding high on his luck, he went for a haircut and then decided to stop at the liquor store while running the rest of his errands to see if his lucky streak would keep going. That third ticket, for the $3,000,000 Ultimate Riches game, hit the jackpot. He won the full $3 million.

Try These Tips To Win at Scratch Offs

While these tips won’t help you win scratch cards every time, they can give you a bit of an edge to boost your chances at winning. By taking the time to strategize before you buy your scratch offs, you can still increase your odds.