The total number of tickets printed is a critical value in calculating how the odds of winning a top prize changes over time. In order for our SmartFactor algorithm to work, we have to find the total number of tickets printed for every game we track.
Fortunately, the lottery HAS to decide how many of each game to print so they can set the odds for every game. Some states make it easy and simply publish how many tickets were printed for each game directly on their website or in a ‘game rules’ document somewhere that we can dig up.
Other states, however, try to make it more difficult and do not publish the total number of tickets printed. We have two other means to get to the total number of tickets printed for them. We either gather the detailed odds for every prize published on the lottery’s website and solve for X using algebra, OR our code simply picks up all new games on the day they’re published on the state’s website.
We use any one of these three methods to get to the total number of tickets printed. Then we start tracking the estimated number of tickets remaining every day and publish updated SmartFactor calculations on games every week in our Best Games to Play report!