---
title: 'How to Win More Scratch-Offs? Improve Your Odds with Math'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=p18E0B7ohNY'
video_id: 'p18E0B7ohNY'
date: 2026-07-24
duration_sec: 1145
channel: 'Fun Uber Games'
---

# How to Win More Scratch-Offs? Improve Your Odds with Math

> Source: [How to Win More Scratch-Offs? Improve Your Odds with Math](https://youtube.com/watch?v=p18E0B7ohNY)

## Summary

This video provides a mathematical approach to improving odds when playing scratch-off lottery tickets. The presenter, a math educator and former Wall Street professional, explains how to calculate true odds using state website data and ticket information, debunking common superstitions.

### Key Points

- **Objective of the Video** [00:03] — The presenter aims to teach how to calculate odds using a ticket and state website information, identifying three ways to improve winning chances.
- **Presenter Background** [00:33] — The presenter has a strong math background, a bachelor's and master's degree, an MBA, 13 years on Wall Street, and runs a math educational franchise.
- **Gambling Fundamentals** [01:05] — Gambling with money you can't afford to lose leads to loss; odds are against you in the long run. Play for fun, not to win. Superstitions like lucky stores or cashiers have no mathematical basis.
- **Independence of Tickets** [02:00] — Each ticket is independent; playing multiple games or the same game doesn't affect odds. Holding losing tickets for second-chance lotteries (e.g., California) can be beneficial.
- **Why Some People Win More** [02:44] — The only reasons are: odds dictate someone will win if enough tickets are played, and heavy players win more because they play more tickets (and lose more overall).
- **Advice to Quit While Ahead** [03:42] — If you win $50, don't keep gambling until it's gone. The only way to guarantee no loss is not to play. Cash Cody finds winning tickets in the trash.
- **Understanding Ticket Odds** [04:15] — Back of ticket shows odds of winning any prize (e.g., 1 in 3) and odds of winning cash prizes (e.g., 1 in 4). Free tickets are included in the first but not the second.
- **Three Ways to Improve Odds** [05:11] — 1) Know which tickets in a roll are winners/losers (improves odds if you know first five are losers). 2) Choose tickets with better overall odds (e.g., 1 in 4 vs 1 in 5). 3) Check state website for outstanding unclaimed prizes.
- **Using State Website Data** [06:44] — California website shows prize levels, total winners, claimed and unclaimed prizes. Example: Lucky Streak scratchers ($20 ticket) with odds 1 in 3.05 overall, 1 in 4.4 cash.
- **Calculating Total Tickets** [08:07] — Using odds and number of top prizes, you can calculate total tickets. E.g., 4 grand prizes at odds 1 in 3 million means 12 million tickets.
- **Proving Odds Accuracy** [10:10] — Overall odds 1 in 3.05 gives 32.8% payback. Cash odds 1 in 4.4 gives 22.7% payback. These match the spreadsheet calculations.
- **Expected vs Actual Prizes** [12:02] — Calculate expected unclaimed prizes by multiplying total prizes by percentage of unclaimed tickets. Compare to actual unclaimed from website to determine if game is favorable.
- **Example of Favorable Game** [16:52] — If actual unclaimed grand prizes (e.g., 3 out of 4) are higher than expected (61% of tickets unclaimed), the game has better odds. This can shift overall odds from 1 in 3.05 to about 1 in 2.9.

### Conclusion

While scratch-offs are games of chance, using mathematical analysis of state data and ticket odds can slightly improve your chances. However, the presenter emphasizes playing for fun rather than expecting to win long-term.

## Transcript

can win money and learn ways to make money so I'm gonna do a how-to video how scratch-offs and try to stay to the end because I'm going to really delve into how to calculate the odds using a ticket and
the information on your state's website so in the beginning of this presentation it's just more about some basic info and then at the end of this slide all three ways identified that can help actually improve your odds of winning so my
background I was always really strong in math as a kid and then I got my math as a kid and then I got my bachelor's and my masters my MBA I worked on Wall Street for 13 years and I started a math educational franchise
started a math educational franchise where I where I run a business and we where I where I run a business and we teach kids math and so one thing I want with money you can't afford you tend to lose when you need something and you
and you don't want to actually lose the money but you still gamble with it it never works and you'll never win in the long run even if the first time you play you hit a ten million dollar jackpot if you keep playing you're gonna
odds are against you but you may win in the short run you should really be playing this game for fun and not to win or lose but you mate you can win in the or lose but you mate you can win in the short run and superstitions mean nothing
if you like a particular store or the color for ticket or a particular cashier it means nothing there's no math or odds that prove that beneficial and there's
that prove that beneficial and there's no assuming the odds on on the games I talked about are similar or the same there's nothing that says you should play multiple games I hear people say you should play three games and not the
same game it doesn't matter they're all independent each ticket is independent from the others and it doesn't matter doesn't matter if you play ten tickets in one game
and one taken from 10 different games assuming the odds are the same into the assuming the odds are the same into the games doesn't matter on your benefiting games doesn't matter on your benefiting your improving your chances of winning
one thing just hold losing tickets because some states like California have second-chance lotto lotto drawing so you could actually win on losing tickets and the only time there's only two ways people really are winners and some
people claim I understand things so that's why I'm a winner it doesn't make any sense the only two reasons people tend to win more is the first one is just odds dictates someone who will win if you if a million people played one
ticket from this lotto one person probably is gonna win a jackpot it's just the odds and that person doesn't not have any more information it's not not have any more information it's not that person's lucky well they are lucky
but the they didn't do anything any different to win the odds just are gonna say someone's gonna win if enough tickets are played and their people say tickets are played and their people say I won $10,000 more than five times well
I've won this and that don't Louisan those people win is because they play so gonna ventually win more than you because you play less tickets of course they lose a lot more I think quit while you're ahead if you
win fifty bucks you don't have to keep gambling till it's all gone because it doing it and the only way to guarantee not to lose money is to not play that's that's a way to guarantee no loss and there's a this guy cash Cody who who
finds tickets in in the garbage or places people throw them away and some people throw away winning tickets so that's a way you can win in the scratch-offs we're not spending any money and just to give you some
information on the back of a ticket is yes to odds it says for example 1 & 3 it says odds of winning any prize one and three and this includes all the
because when you get a free ticket they consider that they don't consider that consider that they don't consider that cash even though you got cash if you want and odds of winning cash prizes at one and four it tends to be worse
because it excludes a free ticket and a free ticket there's more free tickets than anything so that's what those two numbers are and I'm going to prove that out and I spreadsheet later so you can see how it ties it I could tie it out to
a real ticket so these three ways identified are ways to actually win or identified are ways to actually win or not win but improve your odds if you know which tickets in a particular role will winners the losers then you can't
improve your odds you can't guarantee a win but if you know if there's a roll of 30 tickets and you know the first five were losers you will have better odds were losers you will have better odds from the next 25 if if the roll if the
ticket said 103 and the first five tickets were losers you might bring your odds to one in two point seven or something like that you're not gonna guarantee a win but you'll improve if you have that
information which is hard to get unless you know someone who works at the yourself another way to to improve your odds is look at the back of a ticket if one ticket says one in four chances of
winning any prize and the other ticket says one in five the one in four ticket you'll you'll make more money if you play that you'll lose less money I should say if you play that ticket than the other ticket of course you could pay
the worst odds ticket and hit the jackpot anything's possible in in jackpot anything's possible in in independent trials in small samples but in larger samples the odds are play the better ticket the
ticket with the better odds and the last thing which I'm gonna really delve into thing which I'm gonna really delve into a lot is check the your website your state website to see which ticket how many tickets are outstanding and
unclaimed because that could also help you and he and I'm going to show you you and he and I'm going to show you that right now
so the California website this ticket lucky scratchers lucky streak scratchers it's a $20 ticket and it shows you the overrides and it's same thing if you look in the back of the ticket one in 3.05 the cache odds are one at 4.4 and
this is handy and I'll show you how to actually use this information so it shows you all the price levels and how many total winners and how many prizes claimed and how many prizes unclaimed so this alone doesn't give you any
information because I'll give you a quick example okay if you know this two quick example okay if you know this two grand prizes available right that grand prizes available right that doesn't mean that's better or worse than
three grand prizes are one grand prize because what if I what would you rather have to two grand prizes out there and say there's ten tickets out there I understand that can't happen but say there was ten tickets and two grand
prizes twenty percent chance of grand prize I'd rather have that than three grand prizes and a million tickets out there right so the number of prizes
about of a landing doesn't mean anything you have to apply that against how many tickets are out there and we can do that pretty easily and I'll show you how on pretty easily and I'll show you how on this spreadsheet so remember on it okay
this spreadsheet so remember on it okay let me show you a spreadsheet so I took let me show you a spreadsheet so I took each price level and and it shows you the five million dollar prize level and for winners to to claim to unclaimed so
for total winners five million dollar prize amount then 20 total winners of the hundred hundred thousand dollars that's when if when I first started the that's when if when I first started the game and you can see if you if you sum
up all the total winners and it's all on the site it gives you the total the the site it gives you the total the total winners
when it started that word winners and you could find out how many tickets the game had when it started because it's it had four or five million dollar tickets
it's told you that when it first started and on the website it said the odds of winning a five million dollar ticket are one and three million so so if there
were four tickets all you have to do is take four times three million and that's how many tickets they're worth twelve point one million tickets up here I wrote it and you can do that with any level if there were twenty one hundred
thousand two thousand undred thousand-dollar tickets and of six and the odds of winning a one in six hundred thousand just times out by twenty it's thousand just times out by twenty it's gonna be twelve point 1 million so that
you can figure out how many total tickets pretty easily so now you know million in a total tickets of twelve point one million so the total winners
point one million so the total winners is thirty three percent that's how many winners there are one in three tickets are winners regardless of the price are winners regardless of the price level whether it be twenty dollars or
five million dollars one out of three will be a winner so let me show you the will be a winner so let me show you the the odds remember here it said overall the odds remember here it said overall odds one and three point oh five so I
odds one and three point oh five so I could prove that's correct so so that means for every three to five dollars you spend you 100 bucks so equals 100
over three or five equals thirty two point eight percent so that's the point eight percent so that's the payback for this game which I showed you up here so every dollar you spend you get thirty two point eight cents back if
get thirty two point eight cents back if you've played every single ticket it's really really close and if some reason I'm not it's not exact I don't
know why but it's really close I got thirty two point seven four it's thirty two point eight so so that's the overall odds and then they do the cache odds odds and then they do the cache odds also one in four point four which
also one in four point four which excludes the free ticket and a free percent of tickets are free ticket winners so if you subtract ten percent from thirty two point seven four you got twenty two point seven four which is
twenty two point seven four which is which is the payback and you could see that here hundred over 440 because the odds are four point four it's twenty two point seven so that just proves out the odds are accurate and this just helps
you understand things better as well now to go a little deeper to go a little deeper now you can prove which games are better values there's no guaranteed winner games but there's games to give bring
the odds closer to your favor and this particularly game let me the odds should particularly game let me the odds should not be in the odds are out of our favor
not be in the odds are out of our favor and I'll show you why so we could figure and I'll show you why so we could figure out the actual prizes it's pretty easily because they even say on their website when the game started there were four or
when the game started there were four or five million dollar prizes so so it's twenty million dollars at Grand Prizes and then two million dollars of second-place prizes so if you get some all the prizes 192 million dollars in
all the prizes 192 million dollars in prizes
complicated but I'll explain it and feel free to talk up in the comments and ask free to talk up in the comments and ask me if you have any questions so like I me if you have any questions so like I can calculate the expected what I expect
can calculate the expected what I expect the prize is to be out there unclaimed the prize is to be out there unclaimed the way I do it is I take that 192 the way I do it is I take that 192 million of total prizes and I have to
million of total prizes and I have to multiply it by the number of the percent multiply it by the number of the percent of tickets that are unclaimed so if half the tickets have been are out there in a market right roughly half of that hunt
in 191 million dollars is what I expect to be what I could win so I was able to figure out because there's this they don't tell you how many tickets are out
there they just tell you how many of winning tickets are out there that winning tickets are out there that haven't been cleaned yet so they say the easy one is the grand prize of the four total there's two unclaimed and ace to
total there's two unclaimed and ace to show you this prize available two out of four so half of the unclaimed half the Grand Prizes are out there and if you go Grand Prizes are out there and if you go look at this in each price increment and
look at this in each price increment and on the on the most common prize a free on the on the most common prize a free ticket 61.4% have been unclaimed which is just some agenda for two thousand unclaimed over 1.2 million total and
they even they have that on their site 742 unclaimed 1.2 million total so sixty one point four percent of the free tickets are out there for someone to get
tickets are out there for someone to get so the overall for all the tickets of the unclaimed ticket to sixty one point one percent of unclaimed tickets are out one percent of unclaimed tickets are out there that that still can be won by us
there that that still can be won by us so I can I think we can assume and it should be really close that the total tickets out there in the market are also tickets out there in the market are also 61.1% so there's I think that's a pretty
good assumption so if I assume that 61% of the tickets have been unscratched of the tickets have been unscratched still on the shelves that means that if
still on the shelves that means that if I take the total number of prices over all times the unscratched tickets 192 million times 61.1% that equals 117 point three million that's how many how much money I expect can be
earned from this game based off with the information I have but I know the actual prizes out that remain because they tell you on a website there's 10 million of
the grand prize heels to left and I sum all the prize out there there's a hundred seventeen point two million actual action that the website tells us actual action that the website tells us that still has that still is unclaimed
that still has that still is unclaimed so using this information I can deduce so using this information I can deduce that that the number of actual prices out there is less than what I expect so therefore we shouldn't play the game
therefore we shouldn't play the game it's really really close so this is kind it's really really close so this is kind of like not as as much a difference as
me just show you remember how it the website said there's two unclaimed grand prizes say the website said there's three look at the actual prizes
because there's another grand prize out there so based off of the information we should definitely play this game because the actual prices out there are much our
good amount larger than what we expect it to be because there's 75% of the it to be because there's 75% of the grand prizes are out there and 61% of
grand prizes are out there and 61% of the tickets have been actually played so the odds aren't gonna ever get to where we can win guaranteed but the overall if there were three unclaimed grand prizes the overall odds would benefit us more
now we will go more in our favor I should say when it first came out when nobody touched the ticket it was one in 3.05 now if if they if if this was the case there was three unclaimed it would be maybe one in 2.9 or something like
that it would bounce closer to our favor so still I think I just I don't look at the stuff too much I just play for fun but if you want to really delve into it
but if you want to really delve into it and increase your odds you can using all this information and I know I got pretty deep into the spreadsheet and I'm pretty sure it's accurate but feel free to eat to write in the comments if you think
something's off or you have another spin on it I'd love to hear it please like comment subscribe and thanks for watching