What if you could change your life by winning the lottery? Most people dismiss their chances of winning. But be honest: do you really understand your odds of winning? When it comes to New York scratch off tickets, the odds may be better than you think. Keep reading to learn all about your odds of winning!
The Printed Odds
There are a few different ways to figure out your odds of winning a New York scratch-off lottery ticket. And the simplest way to determine the odds is to check what is printed on the ticket.
Lottery games are legally obligated to tell you the odds of winning. For example, you might flip over a card and read that you have a 1 in 4.15 chance of winning a prize.
At first glance, that doesn’t sound so bad. You basically have the same odds of winning as you did randomly guessing on a multiple-choice test back in high school!
However, understanding the real odds is a bit more complicated than that. Fortunately, our guide will walk you through everything you need to know.
Different Prizes, Different Odds
If you thought the odds above sounded a little too good to be true, then you’re not entirely wrong. The published lottery odds simply tell you the odds of winning some kind of prize. And that includes the very low prize amounts (such as $5).
However, what attracted you to the lottery in the first place was the big prize. And you have a far lower chance of winning the jackpot than you do of winning five bucks.
That’s why you need to see how many of each prize is available. At a glance, this can give you a rough idea of how likely you are to win certain prizes. And once you know how many of each prize is available, you can make some calculations to determine your very specific odds.
Doing the Math
Remember when you told your old math teacher that you’d never use these skills outside of school? Well, your teacher just got the last laugh. And that’s because cracking the lottery code is just a matter of doing some quick math equations.
In our previous example, we considered a hypothetical New York scratch-off lottery game where the odds of winning are 1 in 4.15. Let’s say that you either check the card or the lottery website and determine that the total number of prizes is 2,500,000.
To complete your equations, you need to know how many lottery tickets were printed. This information isn’t always available to you. But you can figure it out by multiplying the total number of prizes available by the number of tickets printed.
In our above example, you’d multiply 2,500,000 by 4.15. This lets us know that there are 10,375,000 tickets that have been printed.
Why is that information important? Simple: because it lets us calculate the odds of winning very specific prizes.
The Real Odds
While it feels good to win anything from the lottery, nobody buys the tickets hoping to simply win five bucks. Chances are that you are hoping to win jackpots that range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars. But what are your actual odds of winning that big New York scratch-off prize?
This is where we have to do more math. Now that you know how many tickets are available, you can look back at the number of prizes available. For example, let’s say there are five grand prize tickets out there.
If there are 10,375,000 tickets circulating and five grand prizes available, then you have a 1 in 2,075,000 chance of winning big.
At first, that may seem pretty discouraging. But you can apply this technique to all of the other available prizes. And you have far better odds of winning smaller prizes that still make playing the game worth it, such as the $500 prizes.
Do Some “Comparison Shopping”
Want to really improve your chances of winning the New York lottery? The trick is to do a bit of “comparison shopping” with different lottery tickets!
One way to do this is to simply look at the odds printed on each game. Armed with this info, you can then buy the tickets with the best odds, though this doesn’t always give you the whole picture (more on this in a minute).
You can also see which New York lottery games have the best prizes. Of course, “best” is in the eye of the beholder: you might look for games with higher top prizes or games that have better mid-tier prizes (which, of course, are easier to win than the jackpot).
Figuring Out Which Games Are Worth Playing
All of that math we reviewed is going to come in handy once more. That’s because doing some quick equations is the only way to determine if a New York lottery game is worth your time or not.
When you’re comparing games, it’s entirely possible that you’ll find two scratch-off games with similar printed odds. But it’s a rookie mistake to assume that these games are more or less the same.
That’s because they may have different overall amounts of tickets printed. And the number of prizes available for different prize categories may be very different.
What does all this mean? Even if two lottery games have the same printed odds, you may have a better chance of winning large prize amounts with one over the other. But you can’t figure that out until you crunch the numbers.
Finally, don’t forget to check out different lottery websites to learn how many prizes have already been awarded. A quick bit of research might help you learn key information, including whether any of the top prizes are still available!
Winning New York Scratch-Off Lottery Games: Your Next Move
Now you know how to figure out the odds of winning your next New York scratch-off lottery ticket. But do you know how to really improve those odds?
We specialize in helping scratch-off players win big and win more often. To see what we can do for you, come check out our scratch-off secrets today!