How to Tell if a Lottery Ticket is a Winner without Scratching It
Is it possible to know ahead which scratch tickets are likely winners?
Is there a way to know if a scratch ticket is a winner before you buy it or before the bottom code is scratched off?
Here are some secret codes, legends, legit tools, methods, tips, strategies, & myths to find your winning lottery scratch ticket.
Secret Codes:
The Florida Lottery used to put a three letter code on scratch-off lottery tickets that indicated whether the scratch-off was a winner or not.
- FTN meant the ticket was a $15 winner
- FHN meant the ticket was a $500 winner
- KVX or some other seemingly random and undecipherable group of letters meant the card wasn’t a winner
Versions of these codes have been used by many state lotteries on their scratch-off tickets, but the codes aren’t visible until they’re scratched off. The state lotteries are also changing their codes and scanning methods.
Legends of People who Cracked the Lottery:
#1 — Mohan Srivastava — geological statistician from Toronto
In 2003, Srivastava informed the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation that he cracked one of their Tic-Tac-Toe games. The lottery ignored him at first, but Srivastava sorted 20 new tickets in two envelopes, one with the presumed winners and the other with the losers, and mailed them in. He got 19 out of 20 right. The game was quickly removed from retailers. His method is called the Singleton Method and is summarized below.
Scratch ticket producers want everyone to think that scratch-cards are a game of chance, it’s almost impossible to make them truly random though. Algorithms are used to ensure the correct number of winning cards are produced. If not, then they couldn’t control the number of winning tickets.
The Singleton Method only works for scratch tickets where you scratch off numbers and match them with numbers already shown. These visible numbers are the key to this system. Another thing to note is that you need to be able to see the front of the scratchers before you buy them, which isn’t always possible. On top of this, there’s no guarantee how much you’ll win…you could go through the effort of identifying and purchasing a winner, only to find that you’ve won only $2. Srivastava did the math and didn’t think it was worth his time or money to exploit this rare loophole.
#2 — James “Whitey” Bulger — notorious Boston mobster
In 1991, Whitey Bulger and three others cashed in a lottery ticket worth ~$14.3 million. Lottery officials said the win was legit and there was no way the game was fixed…Bostonians felt otherwise, it was too good to be true.
Telling winners from losers is possible in some cases. Of course, nobody is quite able to pinpoint when spotting a winning ticket is going to be the case. A person who has figured out a secret would likely not share it anyways, unless that person is like Srivastava. As Srivastava said, “there is nothing random in the lottery.” He believes that lottery games are designed to entice customers and exert some form of control.
How can someone get an edge against the lottery?
Legit Tools to Find Winning Scratch Tickets:
Before buying any scratch ticket, look at the odds on the back of the ticket or on the state lottery website. Typically the state lottery websites tell you some information such as the ticket’s prize tiers, top prize amount, overall odds to win, top prizes remaining, and starting odds to win each prize tier. As nice as this seems, this is not enough info! What really matters is how many total tickets are remaining and the current/live odds, not just the starting overall odds to win certain prizes. This requires some advanced math calculations that people aren’t likely going to do when the lottery data updates daily and before they buy their ticket(s).
For live lottery data, there are tools such as LottoPlays.
LottoPlays crunches the official state lotteries data, does some additional math/statistics, and provides organized tables & dashboards for users to play smarter. Using LottoPlays, it’s easy to see many valuable insights such as which tickets have the:
- Best/Worst Current Odds to Win
- Best/Worst Current Rate of Return
- Best/Worst Current Odds to Win $100+, $500+, $1K+
- Best/Worst Current Odds to Win $10K+, $100K+, $1M+
Using LottoPlays saves you from buying dud tickets and there are plenty of dud tickets to avoid. Using LottoPlays also allows you to focus on the few better tickets to really go for. LottoPlays narrows your choices so you won’t feel like you’re guessing. Like the MIT team in the movie 21, they don’t just play blackjack, they play certain tables of blackjack based on the live data. This is as good as it gets for knowing which tickets are more likely winners before scratching them.
LottoPlays helps you buy based on opportunities in the data instead of buying based on random hunches that never seem to be satisfied…a much healthier approach to gambling.
If you’re in the mood to just buy a ticket and test your luck then LottoPlays helps you decide which ticket(s) to buy over other similarly priced ones. It especially helps when a cheaper ticket is showing as good or even better returns than a more expensive ticket.
Ultimately, LottoPlays helps you feel satisfied with your gambles/buys! Even though you’re likely going to lose, it helps you feel satisfied with your choices because you’re playing smarter based on the data. LottoPlays helps you avoid having any 2nd guesses or regrets that would lead you to shoot in the dark and play even more. It makes you feel better when you have some sort of strategy/system with data in place that gives you an edge.
Consider this simplified example to understand one reason why LottoPlays data is more important.
Online it might say that Ticket A has 3 $1M prizes remaining while Ticket B has 2 $1M prizes remaining…without LottoPlays data you would think Ticket A has better chances to win $1M since 3 of A is more than 2 of B to win $1M.
The information you don’t have is how many total tickets are left for each game. Using advanced mathematics and official state lottery data, LottoPlays is able to accurately gauge how many total tickets are left for each game.
Ticket A might have 3 $1M prizes remaining but has 6M total tickets currently left for sale, while Ticket B has 2 $1M prizes remaining but only 2M total tickets currently left for sale. You would actually be more likely to win $1M with Ticket B since 2 $1M tickets out of 2M is 1 in 1,000,000 odds while 3 $1M tickets out of 6M is 1 in 2,000,000 odds for ticket A.
Only by using LottoPlays would you know that Ticket B actually has better odds to win $1M. This is one reason why it pays to have the LottoPlays data. Now consider that there are several other prize tiers to factor in, several different games to choose from that vary greatly, and data that updates from the state lotteries daily. LottoPlays crunches it all for you into live dashboards and simple tables for you to play smarter whenever you get the itch to scratch.
You’re likely going to lose, but you can’t win without playing. Get every edge you can against the lottery! If you play scratch tickets, you owe it to yourself to get live data insight. Check out LottoPlays and play smarter today!
Ways to Validate a Winning Scratch Ticket:
(without even having to scratch — which takes all the fun out of it if you ask us)
In Florida, for example, you can…
- Call the Florida lottery at 850–487–7787
- Send an email copy of the ticket to asklott@flalottery.com
- Use a self-check scanner at a lottery retailer
- Mail the ticket to the lottery and wait for a check
- Take the ticket to a retailer to run it through the machine and see if it plays a tune heralding the win
- Use the Florida Lottery mobile app to scan your ticket and see how much you won. You can also use the app to enter 2nd chance drawings on certain tickets, find lottery retailers near you, and more!
!!! — WARNING — !!!
DO NOT show people your ticket bar code! Many people show their winning tickets in Facebook groups, but unfortunately people watch for winners who reveal their barcodes and they can actually steal your win before you cash it in. Sign the back of the ticket, print your name, address and phone number, and do not reveal your bar code to anyone until you redeem your winnings. If you do this, there is no need to worry about getting cheated out of your lottery winnings. Always sign the back of your winning ticket and either take it to a retailer or scan it on your state’s mobile app to verify that it’s a winner before you throw it out.
Tips & Strategies:
- Buy in bulk — the chances of winning on a series of the same scratch ticket are better. This relies on the fact that several tickets in a series are more likely to produce a profit than a single scratch-off ticket.
- Be strict with your budget — you might not win more or less by this tactic, but it’s a safety buffer to keep you from losing too much money. Set yourself a weekly or monthly budget and stick to it so your finances don’t spiral out of control.
- Pick a game and stay with it — if you stick with a game and keep playing it then you will either win big eventually or every losing ticket that you bought will be one more losing ticket out of the equation. If you spread your spending out over a number of games then you could endlessly hit losing scratch cards. Pick a game you like and stick to it. In the long run, it’s a much better strategy.
- Play scratchers like slots — you’ll find there are some slot players who loiter around machines to wait until a player goes on a dry spell or a number of players fail to hit a jackpot prize. The long drought can mean that the slot machine is about to hit. If you try this method for scratch tickets, you’ll need to hang around a place that sells scratchers for a bit of time and that can be uncomfortable and time consuming. Your best bet is to nicely ask the store keeper or cashier if they have had any winning tickets bought lately. Wait for when there isn’t a line of anxious people trying to quickly buy gas and be subtle…it could be the key to a big win.
- Don’t buy the cheapest tickets — the number of scratch cards available these days is crazy and it can be a mine field for those who aren’t familiar. There are so many different designs, prices, prizes, and brands that it can be very confusing and difficult decide. Keep your focus when buying scratch cards. It might be tempting to opt for more of the cheaper tickets, but they’re cheap for a reason…the prize pool is much lower. You’re often better off buying a few higher-priced scratch cards than many lower-priced scratch cards. Quality over quantity when it comes to scratch tickets.
- Don’t buy the team brand or holiday/seasonal tickets — these are typically the worst returning tickets in each state. The lotteries know people are biased towards their teams and/or holiday tickets. They use this feeling to sell more tickets that have worse rate of return. Typically you’re better off avoiding them. This is obvious with LottoPlays data.
- Buy the crossword and cashword tickets — these are typically the better returning tickets but are the most confusing and time-consuming. Oftentimes players don’t realize they have a winner with these tickets and the lottery relies on winners being missed and thrown away. This is obvious with LottoPlays data.
Myths and Fake News:
- You do not have a better chance at winning a scratch-off at a grocery store vs a convenience store vs a gas station. It does not make any difference at all. The only reason why it would seem like more winners come from a particular area is because of the volume of tickets sold in some areas over others and normal fluctuations in chance games.
- From the Colorado Lottery — if a Scratch ticket has an “M” in the 3-digit code, that DOES NOT mean it’s not a winner. They’ve been trying to bust this myth/rumor for many years and aren’t sure where it started, but it keeps resurfacing. Check out the list of winning codes (below) and you’ll see many have an “M”. If you automatically discard a scratch ticket because you saw an “M” in the code, you might have thrown away a big winner!
If you want to tell if a lottery ticket is a winner without scratching it, then you’re not completely out of luck…
Your best bet is to use a tool like LottoPlays to know your best live odds and then follow the Tips & Strategies listed above.
Good luck!
