Mr. Lucky Duck's Rules for Playing the Lottery

"Hey Mr. Lucky Duck, what kind of rules did you set so you don't go overboard with gambling?"

That's a question no one has actually asked me. I'm still going to answer it, though.

Because if I put my personal lottery rules down on paper, I'm more likely to follow them. And if I publish them online, I have no choice but to stick to them (because people are watching and I get embarrassed easily).

So, here are the limits I've set to keep my fun lottery hobby from turning into a depressing gambling habit.

My Current Gambling Budget

Right now, I've got a fairly modest gambling budget.

It's not quite set in stone yet, but I'm thinking somewhere around $10 per week.

That's subject to change based on my finances. The thing with being a self-employed writer is that you never know how the money's going to fall - some months are so tight you can barely spare a dime, and the good months are never that great. 

But generally speaking, if I get some breathing room, I'll probably bump up the weekly spend a bit.

If I don't, I'll be even more stingy with my spending - maybe even turn my weekly budget into a monthly one instead. Because this is all good fun, but there's no sense in losing my house just to get more material for this blog.

 

Cashing Out

My current cash-out target is at $10 of profit.

So if I'm putting in $10 to mess around with, I'll cash out when I hit the $20 mark or (heavens willing) higher.

At $20, anything I've made over and above my initial $10 investment goes right to my checking account where it can be spent sensibly. Anything under that goes right back to the pot - and into the coffers of the Atlantic Lottery Commission.

By cashing out right at the threshold, I can avoid doing anything foolish (well, more foolish than playing the lottery to begin with), like doubling down when I should be pocketing the win and walking away.

 

Topping Up

I haven't fully decided if I should ride the smaller wins or carry them over to my next week.

Like, let's say I buy $10 worth of scratch tickets and things go better than they usually do, so I end up breaking even. What do I do with that fresh $10 that just landed in my ALC account after scanning the barcodes?

Do I treat it like Round 2 and find an excuse to go to the store so I can grab a pair of Jumbo Bonus tickets, or treat myself to ten clicks on a digital slot machine?

Or do I let it cool there for a while so I can use it as the following week's gambling budget?

For now, I'm going to play it by ear. It might be a matter of opportunity more than anything. If I need to grab some band-aids at the pharmacy, then maybe I'll use the winnings on some extra tickets. But if I don't find myself in front of a cash register, I probably won't go out of my way to blow the dough. 

 

Promo Cash Is Free Money 

Promo cash won't fall in my lap every week. But when it does, I plan to treat it like a gift from the gambling fairies.

Part of my morning routine right now is to log into the ALC promotions page and spin the wheel for their Days of Summer contest. So far, I've had nothing but multipliers. But if I ever land on a spot that deposits promo bucks in my account, I'm adding it to the baseline budget

In other words, if I get $10 in promo cash, then I'm playing with $20 bucks that week. Same cashout rules apply, though: if I get any wins that bring me up to a $10 profit, it's going to my bank. 

Oh, and I'm treating tips the same way I do promo cash - extra money I can gamble away for your amusement. 

What I'm Playing

Here's where things get tricky.

A $10 budget doesn't really go far when you're trying to dabble in a few different money-losing ventures.

Broadly speaking, I'm going to play (and write about) three categories of the lottery:

• Lottery draws - especially the low stakes ones like Poker Lotto and Salsa Bingo
• Digital slot machines, crossword games, and other forms of online gambling
• Scratch tickets of various denominations (but mainly in the $2 to $5 range)

It would be great if I could dip into all three each week. But realistically, I'm going to have to make some choices and go back and forth between them (unless I get lucky in life and I can bump up my budget).

Right now, I think I'll focus primarily on scratchers, with a little side action now and then. 

 

Here's to Keeping Our Vices Under Control

That's where I'm at currently. With these restrictions in place, I should be able to have my fun without doing too much harm to my future.

If you've got rules set for your playing, let me know about them. They might inspire me to refine my own guardrails.

And I'll write a new post if and when I update mine (I love a good excuse to ramble).

Budget Bonanza!

It's Friday morning and I'm fresh out of bagels, which can only mean one thing: taking a trip to Giant Tiger to stock up.

Actually, it means two things: another opportunity to buy some scratch tickets.

My last round with them was alright. I had cashed in $24 worth of winners, doubled down by buying a few more, which ended up winning me $15 in the end.

So, you could say I was down $9 - that's one way to look at it. But that's not how a die-hard optimist like Mr. Lucky Duck views the world.

Nah, that $15 meant I was still in the game.

So, I loaded up my cart with all the essentials - bread, bagels, two hefty bags of chocolate chips, and some cat litter that was on sale (yet another win!)

And after the cashier was about done scanning them, I had him ring up some more lottery scratchers for me.

There are a lot of ways you can blow $15 here.

A traditionalist might go for the Lotto 6/49 draw or the Lotto Max, but that's not really my speed.

I was tempted to go for the bigger scores, like a $10 round of 10X Blitz or maybe a trio of Set For Lifes.

Instead, it's the budget ones that were calling my name. Perhaps I had spent too long browsing the discounts in the store or staring at the low price tags on Giant Value knock-off breakfast cereals, but anything more than a $2 or $3 scratcher felt like an obscene luxury.

My first instinct was to get four Flaming 7s, since I've had some decent luck with them recently (nearly broke even!), but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Something about asking for four of the same one felt obscene, like I was really over-indulging in a way that would surely make the Giant Tiger employees feel uncomfortable.

So, I split the purchase - a pair of Flaming 7s and a pair of 2X Blitzes. A decent haul for a low-stakes gambler like myself.

 

You Get What You Pay For

I'm fond of budget scratchers - I really am. But I'm also highly aware of their downsides.

I mean, besides the relatively low prizes - no one becomes a millionaire off these toonie tickets, not unless they invest the jackpot winnings in some kind of savvy enterprise, like whatever tech stock is currently in bubble mode or opening a banana split stand by the beach.

But I can deal with that - I'd be cool just becoming a ten-thousandaire. 

The real bogus aspects are the lightning quick playtimes (even if you scratch slowly, the fun's before it even started) and the low odds. These tickets both have a roughly 1 in 4.5 chance of winning, which means the numbers were stacked against me on this one, even with four goes. 

My chance to win some medium money!

But still, they have their place.

They're a great way to minimize your risks, since you're only wagering $2 at a time (unless you foolishly buy four at once).

What they lack in potential life-changing money, they make up for in month/year-changing money.

Plus they're still enjoyable in their own right - I've already praised the Flaming 7s and its slot machine gameplay, and I'm not taking a single word of it back.

And like I alluded to before, it would be uncouth to roll through Giant Tiger and plunk down a $20 for a Diamond ticket. That's the kind of thing you're only supposed to do at the pharmacy or a gas station.

So, no regrets!

 

Total Payout 

I split the tickets with Mrs. Lucky Duck and before you knew it, we were up zero dollars.

Me and my four tickets were the same - all losers. 

And before you ask: yes, they were all scratched with a toonie. The universe simply wasn't complying today - not for a baller who can afford six packs of bagels and discount cat litter, anyway.

Oh well. That's just the name of the game. You win some and (more often than not) you lose some.

You might be thinking I'm down to nothing now. But you're forgetting I went into this with a $15 win under my belt. So this $8 loss means I'm still up $7.

And if that number isn't a sign that fortune is about to smile upon me, I don't know what is.

Flaming 7s (Lotto Scratch Ticket Review)

I'm new to the world of casual gambling, so when I first walked up to the scratchers display at the nearby pharmacy, I found it bewildering.

A wide array of tickets spread out before me, priced from a reasonable $2 all the way to $30 (as if the lotto was for people who already won the million). 

There were a few familiar choices - I remembered Set For Life and its promise of endless payouts until you croak and I'm pretty sure I'd scratched a crossword ticket for my mom sometime in the distant past - but most of them just found a way to splash a big number at the top to entice us poor saps.

Where's a newbie supposed to start?

Do I play it safe with a crossword-themed one? Do I follow my heart and grab a bingo scratcher in memory of my bingo-obsessed grandmother? What's the difference between the 2X Blitz, 5X Blitz, and 10X Blitz?

How can I even pick when there's a line forming and the cashier is already waiting for me to tap my debit card and hurry out with my allergy meds? 

But through all that sensory overload, one ticket stood out to me over all the others.

When I'd scan the offerings, my eyes kept coming back to the same stack of tickets, over and over: Flaming 7s.

 

That red-hot inferno of potential payouts was like the tiny oasis of calm in that vast display. The only choice that felt obvious.

So as soon as I worked up the nerve to get ask for some tickets with my over-the-counter medications, I pointed my finger to the bold and fiery Flaming 7s ticket without hesitation.

 

The Appeal

So what makes this ticket so darn sexy?

First and foremost, you've got that simple but eye-catching flame-licked design, with a bold 7 sporting the exact same design I've seen on shirts worn by the least trustworthy 28 year olds I've ever encountered.

Here comes trouble

The price is a definite draw - at $2 a play, a guy like me can easily talk himself into buying multiples (which, incidentally, is the trick to winning).

It also boasts the possibility of winning up to four times per card, which is just the kind of thing that will have me dropping toonies on the Jean Coutu counter like I got jump scared.

Potential Payouts

The prize scheme has a nice thematic unity as well. Your lower tiers are standards stuff - $2 to break even, $5 to talk yourself into buying two more tickets, $30 to make you hem and haw about whether you should cash out or double down... right up until the top three prizes, where it flips to a lucky numbers theme:

Three 7s = $777

Three money bags = $7,777

Three flames = $17,777 

Those payouts aren't huge, I guess. But that's fine because I live with the nagging feeling that I don't fully deserve a $10million payday, so at least this feels accessible. Not the kind of winning that would pay off my mortgage or set me up for life, but it would give me the breathing room I need to fix my broken shed door and finish painting my basement. That's the kind of money a guy like me can aim for without having to feel too haughty about it.

I plan to keep dabbling and trying other scratchers, but I can't deny the chemistry I was feeling with this game. I'll play the field some more, but in my heart, I'm a Flaming 7s guy.

 

The Gameplay

Flaming 7s is a simple slot-style game: there are ten rows to scratch, each with three symbols to uncover. Uncover three identical symbols in any single row and you win one of the prizes. 

And as mentioned before, you might get up to four wins on a single card, so that's anywhere from $8 to - well, I'm guessing $17,777 because I suspect they wouldn't print a card with multiple sets of triple flames.

In terms of playtime, it's modest. Compared to the search-and-find ones like crossword puzzle or bingo scratchers, you get through each game very rapidly. But still, it can take two or three minutes, which isn't too shabby for two bucks.

My only real gripe with this is the fruit. The lemons and oranges look too similar for my liking. I don't mind the disappointment of being shown two money bags before uncovering a cherry and coming up empty. But thinking I've made $30 only to realize that one of my oranges is really a lemon feels more like getting wedgied by the ALC.

I'd like to speak to the manager

Total Wins and Losses

So far, I've purchased and played a grand total of four (4) Flaming 7s.

That's a risky gamble, because the chances of winning are listed as 1 in 4.52, so I had stacked the odds against me on this one.

But I don't call myself Mr. Lucky Duck for nothing. So while two cards came up empty, I managed to get three different rows of cherries on the other two.

That's $6 - just shy of breaking even (aka the lotto scratcher's payday).

No big wins yet, but that seals the deal. I'll be going back for more of these and with any luck, I'll uncover one of those 7-themed prizes. Or get so angry at all the orange/lemon fakeouts that I rage quit and go buy a few Set For Life tickets just so I remember what hope feels like.

Either way, I'll keep you posted. 

4 Steps to Scoring a Win on Lotto Scratch Tickets

I've been spending far too many hours of what precious little time I have on this Earth watching YouTube videos of people scratching out lottery tickets.

This isn't a lifelong habit or anything like that. I only started doing this about a week ago. But still, it's impossible to watch more than three of these in a row without feeling the need to sit down and take stock of what you're doing with your life.

And already, I can tell you that the most compelling ones aren't the videos of people winning big. It's not the videos of people losing big, chasing the losses, and losing even bigger.

It's the ones where people demonstrate their strategy for winning.

(Especially when they proceed to lose money doing it.)

Most of these involve some kind of mystical numerology with the ticket numbers. Like buying the first tickets in the pack or some nonsense like that.

Which doesn't seem to make a lick of difference to the results, at least based on my admittedly recent watch history. It also isn't a scheme I could participate in if I wanted to, because the Atlantic Lottery Commission provides retailers with plastic display cases where the tickets overlap and cover the numbers on the bottom, so all of us would-be math wizards can't find a way to game the system.

That's alright. I'm going to tell you that you don't need to even glance at those numbers to improve your odds of winning with lotto scratchers, because I've got four techniques that work way better than prayer and buying tickets with angel numbers.

I didn't make this up out of thin air. You can trust me on this because it's based on my lifelong experience of playing a total of about nine scratch tickets and winning small on two of them.

Buy at Least Five Tickets

This is just straightforward math. Each Scratch N Win game has its own odds of winning, but most of them hover somewhere around one in four chances of getting some money back.

So if you buy five at once, you're almost certain to taste that sweet thrill of uncovering a prize.

Technically, four tickets would do this, but getting that fifth one makes up for those unlucky days where the gods are not raining fortune down upon you.

I'd also recommend not just getting five tickets, but five of the same. That way you're not spreading the gambling mojo too thin, but concentrating it all in a single stack. (We're no longer doing math here, but you wouldn't be playing lotto tickets if you weren't at least a slight bit superstitious.)

Might help to study the stats a bit too. Cash Blowout promises relatively small but achievable wins, but its listed odds are 1 in 5.7, which means you'd need seven tickets to follow this system (to the tune of $70, which is kind of hefty considering the top prize is a mere $100). Playing 10X Blitz will give you 1 in 3.73 chances of winning though, which is fairly decent overall. And if you have the budget to mess with the $30 Extreme Crossword, you're looking at a 1 in 2.94 chance of winning something each round. 

You're not guaranteed a win with this system (because there's no such thing as a guaranteed win) but you can reasonably expect at least one.

If you're really lucky, you'll actually break even. Though you'll probably be down a few bucks by the time you've scratched them all. Which is fine because this is about scoring wins, not ending up in the green.  

 

Scratch with a Toonie 

After buying my first set of tickets, I rummaged through the backpack I keep all my stuff in (I'm too cheap to buy a wallet) and fished out a few stray coins.

I found a few nickles. Couple of dimes. A loonie.

I tossed them all back in, because I refused to scratch with anything less than toonie.

I'm trying to win money here. And it takes money to make money, so I'll scratch the ticket with the biggest denomination available.

I used all the financial energy trapped in that nickel and bronze disc and transferred it to the ticket itself.

Obviously this is complete and total nonsense, but I'm not about to risk a potential payout by allowing a nickel to make contact with the scratch card. Those small coins can keep their broke energy to themselves, it has no business invading my gambling bubble.

 

Scratch One Spot at a Time 

You need to actually scratch the card properly. 

Seeing someone scan a card without scratching it makes my stomach drop. When they end up getting a loser, I get a smug sense of satisfaction from it ("Good. You deserve it for ruining the spirit of the game.")

Scratch tickets are fun - that's one of the big reasons to play them. Otherwise, you should be taking your money and investing it in slowly appreciating financial vehicles like a grown adult. But no, you want to play a little game and spend a few moments feeling like maybe, just maybe, this one is going to change your life around - or at least give you enough pocket money to buy a pizza.

If you just scratch out the barcode and scan the ticket, you're screwing up big time. If you hurriedly scratch out every spot to reveal potential winners, you're still not doing it right. You have to go step by step, revealing one item at a time, and allowing yourself to get tantalizingly close to a jackpot before scratching out the last spot and realizing you're having PB&J for supper again.

If you don't respect the game, you can't expect to win.

 

Listen to Heavy Music

This is a new superstition I just came up with, but it already worked, so I'm including it here.

I got myself three tickets: two Flaming 7s and one Bingo Extra (because if you happened to read my first post, you'll know that I owe my lotto obsession to radio bingo).

I went through the Flaming 7s first - in complete and total silence, with nothing but the sound of my trusty toonie scraping away at the card.

And guess what? Complete loser:

I followed my entire system, and the best I got were two rows that taunted me with two flames before snatching the grand prize away from me with a gold bar and a cherry of all things (can you imagine though? I could buy so many more scratch tickets with that top prize.)

But my mood felt off - not because I lost, I was already feeling that way before I put my through its paces.

I needed to hype myself up for victory, so I pressed play on Black Sabbath's Reunion live album.

Ozzy's high voice, Tony Iommi's masterful riffing, Geezer Butler's deep low bass lines, and whatever Bill Ward's doing behind the kit (I'm not that tuned into drumming so it's just banging to me).

Now I was in the zone. My eardrums were throbbing with the right energy and sending all those signals to the right parts of my brain (whichever lobe is associated with gambling - probably not the frontal lobe [you have to partially shut that one off to play] so maybe temporal?)

Now the atmosphere felt right. My heart was pumping with excitement instead of anxiety. I was flowing with hope and fire, not fear and worry.

And Ozzy was telling me I'm about to "leave the live [I] led before we met" so that's gotta mean something, right?

It did. Well, sort of. I can't leave my life just yet, but the other two tickets were winners.

I scored a $2 win on my second Flaming 7's and then a nice solid $10 line on Bingo Extra, all thanks to the devilish power of heavy metal.

Mark my words: I'll never scratch in silence again.

 

Happy Losing!

Technically, I followed my system and wound up in the green, with $12 won from $9 worth of tickets.

Except I also foolishly bought my wife an Extra Bingo of her own and one of those $10 gift packs, and I forgot to tell her to listen to Black Sabbath while scratching (and worse, I initially caught her scratching her cards with a dime!!)

I won't share her numbers here (every gambler's finances is their own personal secret shame) but let's just say it took my nice green wins and pulled us down into the red.

So we lost money, but we had fun doing it and won a few times along the way. And that's what this lotto system is all about - losing in the end, but with a smile on your face 

Fixating on the Lottery (Or: Origins of a Lucky Duck)

I have a tendency to get fixated on things, and I can't really control what it will be.

One month, it might be baking. Another, it's cycling.

One year, I decide to learn HTML. The next, I've forgotten most coding lines because I'm too busy obsessing over calisthenics.

And this month, my brain has decided to hone in on the lottery.

This is a new one for me - sort of.

I've stayed away from every form of gambling my whole life, but I've always seen the allure in it.

I remember how thrilling it was to play poker with some of the other kids in my neighborhood, even though we were only wagering pennies and nickels.

I'd spend hours playing casino video games, even though the stakes were virtual and a win on the slots meant absolutely nothing.

And once in a while, I'd get a scratch ticket in a Christmas card, which was really exciting even though I don't think I ever won anything.

But that was it. I never wagered any serious money. For 40+ years I've been on this Earth, I never picked out numbers for the Lotto 6/49 draw. There were video lottery terminals in a few restaurants in my home town, but I never put in a quarter while waiting for my food. And just the thought of walking into a convenience store and asking for a scratch ticket filled me with a visceral discomfort.

If I had to guess, I'd think a few things held me back. 

The big one is money. For most of my life, I've either been behind or breaking even. There were only a few precious months here and there where I was properly ahead, but I'd inevitably slide back into breaking even (if I was lucky). Gambling away a few dollars didn't feel right - not when the baby needed formula or the credit cards were getting so full I'd start looking into what's involved in filing for bankruptcy.

I also have very little exposure to actual wins. Other than the slot machine video games that didn't actually pay out, I never saw anyone win big. The 50-somethings who were obsessively smacking the spin button on the VLTs at the fried chicken joint never struck it big while I was there, and they'd usually walk away with an air of resigned disappointment.

My mom would usually round up purchases with a gamble at the checkout. Scratch tickets were a big too high for that, so she'd buy 25cent and 50cent breakopen tickets with whatever change she got back. The odds on those weren't great, so for the most part, she'd crack them open and toss them out. When she did get a win, it was usually to the tune of one or two bucks - which would go right back to breakopens that would invariably end up getting cracked and tossed.

Plus, I took it to heart that the house always wins. Unless you're betting nickels in a hand of poker against some 12 year old from down the street, the odds are stacked against the players. Anyone playing has a chance to win, but only some of the money we collectively put in flows back to us.

That quiet part of me that got a thrill from renting Vegas Dream for the NES and spending my Saturday spinning through the slot machine, well, it was held back by the more rational part of me. The one that wanted to avoid risk at all cost, the one that tried to cling to money because spending it felt irresponsible, the one that would look at the odds of winning the jackpot and realize it was nothing but a pipe dream - that's the one who took over and made sure I wouldn't become one of the VLT zombies who could waste away fifty bucks before their poutine had been bagged up for takeout. 

I'd find other ways to have some fun.

If I had any extra money, it would go toward something responsible, like an index fund. 

I was going to play it safe. 

But then I started playing bingo.

 

Improving the Odds

Turns out radio bingo might be a regional thing. Or at least a Canadian one.

Because when I started telling Americans that I was playing it, they were confused by the entire concept.

That caught me off guard, because radio bingo has always been in the background noise of my life.

My grandmother was a bingo fanatic. She'd go to any church basement, golden age club, or Knights of Columbus hall that was hosting a game. Then she'd load up on however many cards she could afford, and I'd watch in awe as she scanned and dabbed a carefully arranged set of 15 cards.

In between those rounds, she got her fix at home. She'd play bingo through local access TV or with the numbers being called out over the radio.

Once I was older and married, my mother-in-law started inviting me and my wife to the weekly radio bingo night at her neighbor's house. We'd each have a set of cards - only 3 in total, not 15 like the real Gs do it - and we'd have supper while working through each round.

Fast forward another decade or so, and I'm living in my home town again, but with four kids now. And one week, my wife and I decided to introduce them to the wonderful (and apparently very Canadian) tradition of radio bingo. I bought a stack of cards from the local Jean Coutu, half a dozen bingo dabbers from the Dollarama, and made sure the emergency weather radio was charged enough to stay on for at least an hour.

We played and we were hooked. It became a weekly tradition, until the kids started getting bored of it. Not all of them have the patience for an hour of quietly listening to the radio DJ name out numbers, so we decided to put a pause on it.

So now we had a bingo budget and no cards to buy. And I started thinking of another way to spend it.

Suddenly, the idea of buying scratch tickets didn't seem so off-putting. It actually seemed kind of fun.

And here's the thing with radio bingo: the odds are horrible. Each booklet of cards will run you $10 and you're playing against hundreds of other listeners for a chance at making a few hundred.

We haven't won a single time since we picked it up this year, and that didn't surprise me in the least.

But scratch tickets - that's a whole other story. You don't get an hour of playtime out of it, granted, but you do get some fun while you scrape a coin across your card. And the odds are much nicer. Not for the top prize, of course. But you've got about a 1 in 4 chance of at least getting your money back on your ticket, which is better than any bingo game can offer.

And for even half the amount I was paying in bingo cards each week, I can get enough scratch tickets to make it a statistical likelihood that I'll get some kind of win.

Which makes all the difference in the world. Because gambling can be enjoyable, but nothing beats winning.

Hyperfixating on the Lotto (With Guard Rails)

Like I said earlier, I tend to get fixated on things.

And right now, it's the lottery.

So, I've been buying the occasional scratch tickets, scoping out all the various games offered by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, and reading up on the tax implications of lottery winnings (there are none in Canada, as it turns out), learning how each game is played, and analyzing the odds.

But the thing is, I still haven't managed to get ahead in life. I'm hovering somewhere between falling behind and breaking even. 

Which is a pain in the ass when I'm hyperfixated on something so closely related to money, because it limits how much I can indulge.

So for now, I'm taking a modest approach. I'll set a weekly budget to keep myself from going overboard, make sure I cash out some of any half-decent winnings so I don't just gamble them away as soon as they hit my pocket, and I'll keep spending more time thinking about the lotto than actually playing it.

And I'll document the obsession as I go. I'll write about my musings on the lottery. I'll probably do small experiments with scratch tickets or try out different online gambling strategies, then report back on the results. Or whatever else comes to mind.

I've been feeling lucky lately. I'm about to find out if I really am.