How Do The Odds In Our Holiday Games Compare To ‘Regular’ Games?

Now that our holiday-themed scratch games are in stores for the season, we’ve gotten a player question about the number of prizes available in them and the odds of winning.

Our holiday-themed games by design will only be on the market for a short period of time – about four months. Many of our other scratch games are sold for a year or more.

We order smaller quantities of tickets in our holiday games, which means there will be a smaller number of prizes involved. The key detail, however, is that the odds of winning in our holiday games are very similar to those in our other games, so your playing experience won’t change.

“Crossword” games are a perennial favorite for players, so I’ll compare the three current holiday-themed versions with their non-holiday counterparts:

            • $3 games: $30,000 Holiday Crossword and Bonus Crossword
            • $5 games: $50,000 Holiday Crossword and $50,000 Super Crossword
            • $10 games: $100,000 Holiday Crossword and $100,000 Mega Crossword.

Both of the $3 Crossword games have the same overall odds of winning: 1 in 3.52.

At the $5 price point, the $50,000 Holiday Crossword has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.34 while its non-holiday counterpart has overall odds of 1 in 3.53.

And for the $10 games, the holiday version has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.29 compared to overall odds of 1 in 3.30 in the non-holiday version.

We do our best to keep the game designs in line with each other because we want them to be fun for our players. 

Then there are the folks who say they like our non-holiday games and want to see them come back. And they will! Our holiday-themed games will only be on the market until early January, and then our other games will cycle back onto store shelves when the holidays are over.

Comments

[Mary Neubauer]

Hi, Henry. You've done a good job of checking out the details about the odds of winning in lottery games, and I appreciate that. As the info. you've already reviewed has relayed, it is possible in a scratch game to buy eight tickets in a row that do not win a prize. It's also possible to buy eight tickets in a row that are all winners, or eight tickets in a row that are a mix of the two. That's what happens in the random distribution of winning tickets in our games, and it means that no one -- including us at the lottery -- can predict when or where the next big win will hit. I don't know that I can calculate the probability that you have inquired about, but the details you shared show that the game is working as it should. I am sorry you did not win on those tickets and I wish you the very best when you play the next time.

[Henry G]

Hi Mary,

I'm trying to determine the probability of an event that I experienced - can you please help me out?

A few days ago I purchased eight back-to-back (e.g. #012-019) tickets of the $100,000 Holiday Crossword scratch game and every single one of them was a loser.

As stated in the blog, each play has overall odds of winning of 1 in 3.29. And in previous blogs, it's been explained that just because a game has a 1 in 3.xx chance of winning doesn't mean that purchasing four tickets guarantees a win. (I've also watched the video that demonstrates this with a deck of cards.)

So basically: In regards to the above scratch game, what is the probability of having eight losing tickets in a row?

Would the probability of having eight winning tickets in a row be different?

Thanks!

[John Webber]

Are you aware that some of the Holiday scratch games are nearly unable to be scratched off? The 100,000$$ game is pretty much impossible to scratch the letters.