--- title: 'Scratch Off Adjusted Game Odds: The Odds to WIN MORE than the Ticket Price!' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=HONjKSn0b6w' video_id: 'HONjKSn0b6w' date: 2026-08-02 duration_sec: 286 --- # Scratch Off Adjusted Game Odds: The Odds to WIN MORE than the Ticket Price! > Source: [Scratch Off Adjusted Game Odds: The Odds to WIN MORE than the Ticket Price!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HONjKSn0b6w) ## Summary This video explains the concept of 'adjusted game odds' for scratch-off lottery tickets, which recalculates the odds of winning a prize greater than the ticket price by excluding break-even prizes like free tickets. The presenter demonstrates how overall odds can be misleading and shows how to calculate adjusted odds using a real game example. ### Key Points - **Introduction to Adjusted Game Odds** [00:03] — Lottery players are often unaware of odds data and tips to improve chances. The video introduces 'adjusted game odds' as a way to find games with better odds of winning more than the ticket price. - **Overall Odds Explained** [00:30] — Overall odds are the odds printed on the back of a scratch-off ticket, representing the chance of winning any prize, including break-even prizes (e.g., free ticket or money back). - **Example Game Analysis** [00:58] — Using an Excel prize table, the presenter shows a game with prizes from $750,000 to a free ticket. The overall odds are 1 in 3.47, calculated by dividing total tickets printed (24.7 million) by total winning prizes (over 7 million). - **Problem with Break-Even Prizes** [02:07] — Over 55% of prizes in the example game are free tickets (3.9 million out of 7 million). The presenter questions why lotteries pack games with break-even prizes, as players rarely get excited about them. - **Calculating Adjusted Odds** [03:01] — Adjusted game odds strip out break-even prizes. In the example, removing 3.9 million free tickets leaves about 3.17 million actual prizes. Dividing tickets printed (24.6 million) by actual prizes gives adjusted odds of 1 in 7.79. - **Using Adjusted Odds** [04:16] — Adjusted odds (also called cash odds in some states) help players find games with better chances of winning real prizes. The presenter mentions upcoming rankings for adjusted game odds and encourages players to compare games themselves. ### Conclusion Adjusted game odds provide a more realistic view of a scratch-off's winning potential by excluding break-even prizes. Players should use this metric to choose games with better chances of winning more than the ticket price. ## Transcript here at lot Ed you know as new players discover lot Ed they're genuinely surprised to learn about all the odds data and tips to improve your chances of winning on scratch offs of course it still takes some luck to find that winning ticket but why wouldn't you give yourself an edge and play games with the best odds of winning so today I want to tell you about what we call adjusted game mods now most players have only heard of overall odds of and believe this is the only information available to them now the overall odds are the odds you find on the back of the scratch off after you've bought it and are the odds to win any prize and that includes Break Even prizes Break Even prizes are if the ticket was $5 and you won a $5 Prize or a free ticket those would be Break Even prizes now what's always bothered me about overall odds is how they could be misleading now let me show you an actual game now I'm not going to call out the state so I've put this in information in Excel but here we have a prize table with prizes ranging from $750,000 all the way down to a free ticket and the overall odds of winning on this game are one and 3.47 so what that means is on average about one in every three to four tickets would have a winner now again that's on average and not a hard and fast rule that every three or four tickets is going to hit so on average and the overall odds are calculated by dividing the tickets printed which we have here about the 24.7 million tickets and we divide that by the number of winning prizes in the game and here we've added up the number of winning prizes and there's just over 7 million winning there's just over 7 million winning prizes so when we divide 24.6 million divided by that 7 million we're going to find the overall odds of winning are 1 and 3.47 and that's how they come up with the odds of winning as they look at all the prizes and again this is at the start of a game before any ticket sales have begun so what bothers me about this is where they pack a game full a break even prizes and in this game that break even prize is a free ticket some states it could be you know winning your money back um you know if this game here is a $10 ticket it might be winning $10 back but in this state it's a free ticket and over 55% of the prizes in this game are a free ticket and now I see that 55.5% and I just divided the the number of free tickets 3.9 million free tickets divided by the total number of prizes and I I just don't understand that seriously I I don't know about you but I don't know many players who get too excited about hitting a free ticket or just winning their money back you know I'm not sure if a Lottery's hoping players don't cash those in but I I don't see a reason to pack so many Break Even prizes into a pack so many Break Even prizes into a game so this is where the adjusted game modds coming into play so at lot of which we recalculate the odds of winning any price greater than the ticket price so basically we strip out all these Break Even prizes and in a game like this we would strip out these 3.9 million free tickets and see that there's really just over 3 million actual prizes to be won and I've put that here so our non-break even prizes I simply subtracted out the free tickets from our 7 million priz and we see there's just over 3 million actual prizes that would people would probably be interested in winning now here's what we do then is we're going to recalculate the overall odds so we're going to take the real priz is worth winning the 3169 and we're going to compare that to our tickets printed so we take our 24.6 and divide it by actual prizes and we find that the actual odds of winning something greater than the ticket price is really one and 7.79 so the odds went is really one and 7.79 so the odds went up by differently again we call it adjusted game odds some states may call it cash odds but since not every state has free tickets and their Break Even prizes are cash that's why we call it the adjusted odds so I want to call your attention to this is something that you can look at to find games with the real odds of winning prizes not just break even stuff now at lot wood we'll be rolling out a new rankings soon to rank games with the best adjusted game mods but I wanted to start looking at scratch off games on your own and start comparing those adjusted game mods and find the best games so I hope you found this helpful and good luck scratching