13 Lottery Myths That Are Draining Your Wallet (And What a Pro Gambler Does Instead)

I almost walked out of a gas station with a dead ticket.

I'm talking about a game where every single top prize had already been claimed. I would have handed over $20 for a ticket with literally zero chance of hitting the jackpot. The packaging was shiny. The name was catchy. But the data told a completely different story.

That's the thing nobody tells you about scratch-offs: what's printed on the front of the ticket is almost irrelevant compared to what's happening inside the game's prize pool.

I've spent 15+ years as a professional gambler—poker, card counting, casino advantage play. Over half a million dollars in lifetime winnings. And the number one thing I've learned across every single game I've ever played is this: bad information is more expensive than bad luck.

Scratch-offs are no different. The lottery industry runs on myths. Gas station clerks spread them. YouTube videos repeat them. And every time a player acts on one of these myths, someone else profits.

Let's end that today.

Here are 13 lottery myths I see hurting players every week—and the real strategy behind each one.

Myth #1: "All Scratch-Off Tickets Have the Same Odds"

Walk into any convenience store and you'll see six different scratch-off games sitting in the same display. Most players assume the odds are roughly the same. They're not—not even close.

One $5 game might have jackpot odds of 1 in 250,000. Another $5 game on the exact same rack could be 1 in 800,000.

That's not a small difference. That's more than 3x worse odds for the same price.

The games that sell best are usually the ones with better marketing, not better odds. When you learn how to use a real odds calculator, the gap between a smart ticket and a dumb one becomes impossible to unsee.

Myth #2: "Odds Never Change"

This one might be the most expensive myth on this list.

Scratch-off games print a fixed number of tickets. Inside those tickets are a fixed number of winners at every prize level. As tickets get scratched and prizes get claimed, the remaining pool shifts. The odds you're actually playing with today are different from the odds printed on the back of the ticket.

Sometimes better. Sometimes much, much worse.

I've seen games where the $1 million jackpot has already been claimed, but the game is still sitting in every store in the state. Anyone buying that ticket has zero shot at the top prize—but they have no way of knowing unless they check the current data.

This is the entire reason I built Savvy Scratch. The odds aren't static. They're a moving target. And you deserve to know where that target is before you pull out your wallet.

👉 See which games in your state still have top prizes available →

Myth #3: "New Games Are Always a Bad Idea"

The opposite is often true.

A brand new game launch means 100% of jackpots are still unclaimed. Not 40%. Not 10%. All of them. That's the moment when the current odds actually match—or even beat—the printed odds on the back.

New games are where the value is highest. As a card counter, I learned to look for fresh decks. In scratch-offs, a new game is about as close to a "fresh deck" as you can get.

Myth #4: "The More You Play, the More You Win"

Volume without a filter is just faster losing.

I've watched casual players buy 10 tickets from the same dead game in a single visit. Not one of those tickets had a realistic shot at the jackpot. They played more, and they lost more. No strategy, no filter, no data.

Smart play isn't about quantity. It's about selection. Every serious scratch-off analysis starts with understanding which games are actually worth your dollar—before you buy a single ticket.

Myth #5: "It's All Luck"

Luck determines whether you hit on any given ticket. Strategy determines whether you were even playing a game worth hitting.

Think about it this way: imagine two card players. One sits down at any table, plays any hand, and bets without looking at the cards. The other studies the table, evaluates the deck, and only plays when the conditions are favorable.

Both players lose hands. Both players win hands. But over time, the second player keeps significantly more of their money.

Scratch-offs work the same way. You can't pick the winning ticket. But you can absolutely pick the better game.

Myth #6: "Only Expensive Tickets Pay Out Big"

Higher-priced tickets usually have higher top prizes—that part is true. But "higher prize" and "better odds" are two completely different things.

Some $5 games have stronger jackpot odds than $20 games. Some $10 games are statistically terrible compared to $2 games. Price is just packaging. What matters is the actual prize structure and current remaining inventory.

Myth #7: "The Clerk Knows Which Ticket Will Hit"

With respect to every gas station worker I've ever met: they don't.

No lottery employee, no store clerk, no "lucky ticket guy" at the counter has any access to information about which individual ticket will win. The randomization inside each roll is designed specifically to prevent this kind of pattern recognition.

What does exist—and what almost nobody uses—is publicly available state lottery data showing exactly how many prizes at each level have been claimed. That's real information. A clerk's hunch isn't.

Myth #8: "Tracking All This Is Too Complicated"

In 2005, maybe. Not today.

State lotteries are required by law to publish prize data. The problem used to be that gathering it, organizing it, and actually making sense of it took hours. By the time you'd done the research, you'd talked yourself out of going to the store.

That's the exact problem Savvy Scratch solves. Open the app, select your state, and see every active game ranked by current odds in about 10 seconds.

👉 Start playing smarter for just $5/month →

Myth #9: "Winners Don't Share Their Secrets"

Some do. I'm doing it right now.

And the secret is embarrassingly simple: stop playing games where the top prizes are already gone. That's it. That's the main move.

Everything else—timing, price point selection, budgeting—is secondary to that one principle. A game with no remaining jackpots is a game you should never touch.

Myth #10: "There's No Way to Play Smarter"

Tell that to the players who've used the detailed odds view in Savvy Scratch and immediately stopped playing two games they'd been buying every week.

One subscriber messaged me after switching to a data-driven approach. She'd been playing the same $10 game for months out of habit. When she finally looked at the current prize data, the top prize had been claimed almost a year earlier. She'd been playing a dead game for 10 months without knowing it.

That's not bad luck. That's missing information. And it's completely fixable.

Myth #11: "A Game Is Either Good or Bad Forever"

A game that was terrible last month can become worth playing today—and vice versa.

The prize pool is constantly changing. A game with heavy mid-tier prize availability can shift its relative value compared to other games on the rack. What was "the worst game in the display" in January might look completely different in April depending on what's been claimed across all games.

This is why one-time research doesn't work. The data has to be current. And "current" doesn't mean the date it was printed on the ticket.

Myth #12: "If You Lose, Just Buy the Next One"

This is how budgets collapse.

Chasing losses without a system isn't a lottery problem—it's a gambling psychology problem that shows up in every game from poker to blackjack to scratch-offs. The emotion tells you the next one will be different. The data doesn't care about your emotions.

Set a session budget before you walk in. Choose your games based on current data before you choose based on the artwork. And when your budget's done, you're done—regardless of how you did.

Myth #13: "There's No Point Trying to Beat the Odds"

You're right. You can't beat the odds.

But you can choose better odds. Every single time.

Think about it like this: a baseball player who hits .300 doesn't win every at-bat. They lose the majority of them. But they've spent years learning to recognize pitches, study tendencies, and put themselves in favorable positions. The result shows up in the numbers over time.

Choosing scratch-off games with better current odds, avoiding dead games, and understanding the prize structure isn't guaranteed to make you a winner. But it absolutely changes the distribution of your outcomes compared to random selection.

That's not magic. That's math.

The Bottom Line

Almost every losing scratch-off habit comes back to the same root cause: playing on vibes instead of data.

The packaging is designed to trigger impulse decisions. The display is arranged to maximize sales, not maximize your odds. The clerk at the counter genuinely can't help you.

But you can help yourself. The data is publicly available. The analysis tools exist. The strategy is actually pretty simple once you understand how prize pools work.

I built Savvy Scratch because I was tired of watching people lose money on games they never should have bought. As a professional gambler, the first rule I follow is never play without knowing your odds. Scratch-off players deserve that same edge.

See exactly which games in your state have the best current odds →

Or if you want to go deeper on how the odds actually shift as prizes are claimed, this guide breaks down the full mechanics: The Complete Guide to Lottery Analysis.

Stop playing blind. The data is right there.