Though many people prefer to invest in number-drawing lotteries over scratch tickets, the Texas lottery scratch-off odds are pretty good compared with larger lottos. In fact, a scratch ticket proved lucrative to one San Antonio player as recently as 3 months ago when he won $5 million in a scratch ticket game.
If you want to follow in his footsteps, you likely are wondering how you can choose the right games to play and analyze the odds that you have at winning. Read on to get some expert tips and pointers about how you can improve your chances of selecting winning scratch tickets in Texas.
Know Texas Lottery Scratch-Off Odds
While the ‘odds’ of a game don’t calculate how much money you’ll receive if you choose the winning ticket, they can tell you how likely you are to win at a given game. To figure out the odds of any scratch ticket, you need to look into the number of tickets sold vs. how many have won.
For example, a ticket brand where one person wins every 10 times they play has 1:10 odds even if they only win $5. A game that a person will win every 100 times they play has lower odds- only 1:100. This game has significantly lower odds even if the winner receives $1,000 to the other player’s $5.
You can begin to analyze odds by tracking how many people win at a certain lottery. While it’s impossible for you to find out exactly how many tickets were sold, you can track whether one lottery or another has more winners within a given timeframe. If a game has 50 winners in a month, it probably has better odds than one that only has 10 winners within that same month.
Choose the Right Lottery
Instead of doing this guesswork, however, you can simply look at the pre-calculated overall odds of Texas’s main scratch games. Some games with the highest odds include:
- $750 Million Winner’s Circle (1:2.88) – $30
- Mega 7s (1:3.05) – $20
- 500X Loteria Spectacular (1:3.1) – $20
- Instant Millionaire (1:3.2) – $20
- Million Dollar Loteria (1:3.27) – $20
Any of these Texas scratch lottery games are likely to win you a bit of money, even if the tickets range from $20-$30. If your aim is to win even a small amount, you likely will want to choose one of these tickets since they are the five options with the best odds.
Do Some Research Before Buying
Once you’ve decided on the scratch ticket that you want to buy, it’s time to choose a venue where you want to purchase your tickets. This can be your local drugstore, a corner shop like a 7/11, or a gas station. Head over and loiter a bit to watch as players scratch or scan their tickets.
When there’s a long dry spell where multiple players lose, this means that the well-shuffled scratch cards may be coming up on one that will hit big. This is especially the case with tickets that have odds that are 1:2 or 1:3- if 3 or more players in a row lose, the odds are in your favor if you choose to play then.
It’s exactly like playing a slots game at a casino. You want to wait around until the number of losers before you make your chances of winning higher.
You also can strike up a conversation with the ticket seller (assuming that you aren’t buying from a machine). Ask them if they’ve sold any winning tickets lately and what lotteries they were for. Most vendors won’t mind answering simple general questions that could clue you in to what ticket could win you big bucks.
Use the Singleton Method
To analyze your odds of winning, you can also analyze the scratch cards themselves. This scratch lottery analysis is called the ‘Singleton Method,’ and it hinges on the fact that many scratch card manufacturers make winning cards slightly differently than losing ones.
The layout or design of a scratch card can give away whether it has any numbers or symbols that could give you a win. This is especially the case for cards that have numbers on the side of the scratch area. While this isn’t a surefire way to win, many players have found that it heightens their odds.
Buy in Bulk and Set a Budget
If you’re playing a game with, say, 1:5 scratch lottery odds, you’ll probably win something if you buy 6 scratch tickets. The more tickets you purchase at a time, the more likely you are to get a winning one. This simple logic has a clear conclusion: buying tickets in bulk is a worthwhile endeavor.
However, this doesn’t mean that you should squander all of your money on scratch tickets. It’s really easy to let gambling get out of hand, which means that you should set aside some money in your monthly budget for it and not play more than you have. This will prevent your finances from suffering even when you play in bulk.
Keep Your Old Tickets
Finally, keep your old tickets, even if they were losing ones. You can analyze which lotteries you’ve won after multiple plays and what it seems that the specific odds for each lottery are at the specific venue where you buy tickets.
You also may make a mistake when calculating your winnings on a bad day where you were distracted or had a clouded mind. Everyone misses things sometimes, so you might find a mistake that you made later where you actually let go of a winning ticket. Don’t accidentally throw money away!
Win Big Today
Now that you know some ways to analyze and improve your chances of winning scratch tickets, it’s time to get more ideas on how you can strike it rich with lottery jackpots.
Contact us with any questions that you have about Texas lottery scratch-off odds that you can’t find in our user guide. Our experts are happy to help you come up with ways to choose scratch tickets and analyze your selections for ways to win. We look forward to hearing from you soon!