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.