JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – If you’ve ever tried to win a major lottery like Powerball or Mega Millions you know it’s virtually impossible, with the odds in the hundreds of millions to one.
But scratch-off tickets are a different story.
The odds are usually better than 1 in 5 that you’ll win something. So we sat down with a mathematician to figure out the best way to get the odds in your favor on scratch-off tickets.
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To start our investigation into this story we compiled the overall odds of all the scratch-off games the Florida Lottery offers and most are in the range of 1 in 3-point-something to 1 in 4-point-something. That’s a better than 20% chance that you’ll at least get your money back.
Then we brought in Scott Hochwald, a math professor at the University of North Florida. He said the thing that’s the key to increasing your odds involves a trip to the Florida Lottery website.
Each scratch-off game is listed and it displays how many of the game’s top prizes remain. If the game has been out a long time with a lot of tickets sold but there are still a good number of top prizes, focus on those games.
“They don’t quite tell you how many tickets are left. But as time goes on, if a lot of the big prizes are left you can assume people are buying tickets,” said Hochwald.
News4JAX also asked Hochwald about the odds based on the cost of tickets.
There are, of course, $1 scratch-off tickets but there are also $10, $20 and even $50 tickets available. Hochwald did some calculations and it appears your odds of winning some sort of prize increase slightly based on the cost.
He compared $1 tickets to $10 tickets. His calculations showed if you bought $1,000 worth of $1 tickets you would get around $520 back on your original investment. But if you bought $1,000 worth of $10 tickets, you would get back around $584 of your original investment.
Hochwald also warned against taking geography into account.
That means if you see one game has a lot of top prizes left so you purchase a bunch of tickets all over Jacksonville, the harsh reality is the winning tickets could be in other parts of the state and you’ll never find them. It’s essentially impossible to tell.
And on the big lotteries like Mega Millions or Powerball, while there are not great tips to beat the system, one thing involves people who pick their birthdays. Keep in mind if you do this you limit yourself to numbers under 31 and limit the amount of numbers that can be drawn.
MORE: The interactive map below shows where winning tickets for the top prizes in the Florida Lottery’s different scratch-off games were purchased. The map includes winners for all scratch-off games that were active as of May 3, 2024.
Editor’s Note: Gambling Addiction is real.
The Florida Lottery said it wants games to remain fun for players at all times. But it knows that over-playing can happen. If you or a loved one is struggling with a gambling addiction, we encourage you to seek help by contacting one of these organizations:
- The Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling, (888) 236-4848, gamblinghelp.org
- National Problem Gambling Helpline, (800) 522-4700, ncpgambling.org
- Gamblers Anonymous, (855) 222-5542, gamblersanonymous.org/ga