Best Scratch-Off Tickets: What Data Tells You About Your Odds
7/7/2025
Best Scratch-Off Tickets: How to Find Better Odds Using Real Data
Not all scratch-off tickets give you the same odds. While they look identical hanging behind the counter, some tickets offer significantly better value than others. Most players have no idea.
I've spent 15+ years as a professional gambler, analyzing tens of millions of poker hands and counting cards at blackjack tables. When I started applying that same mathematical discipline to scratch-offs, I found something most lottery players miss: the odds change constantly based on how many prizes have been claimed.
In this post, I'll show you exactly how to read scratch-off data, compare tickets, and find the ones with better odds. You can do this yourself with some legwork, or use a tool like Savvy Scratch to surface the best options instantly.
What Makes One Scratch-Off Better Than Another?
When I say "best," I'm not talking about the flashiest design, the highest price point, or whatever's new this week.
I mean the ticket that gives you the best mathematical value for your dollar based on:
- Odds of winning any prize at all
- Odds of hitting a jackpot or top-tier prize
- How many top prizes are still available versus when the game launched
- How many tickets have already been sold
The best ticket is one where more prizes are still available (especially the big ones), fewer total tickets remain in circulation, and the math tilts slightly more in your favor.
That's it. No lucky numbers. No patterns. No hot store theories. Just data.
If you want a deeper dive into how this math actually works, I wrote a full breakdown in How to Use an Odds Calculator to Pick Better Scratch-Offs.
How to Read Prize Remaining Reports
Every state lottery publishes reports showing how many prizes are left in each active game. You'll find these on your state lottery's website, usually in the scratch-off or instant games section.
Here's what actually matters in those reports:
Total top prizes at launch vs. top prizes remaining today. This tells you how much of the jackpot pool has been claimed.
Total tickets printed vs. estimated tickets sold. This is harder to find (many states don't publish it), but it's critical for calculating your real odds.
Game age. A game that's been running 18 months has a very different profile than one that launched last week.
A Simple Example
Say a $10 ticket launched with 8 million tickets and 4 jackpots of $500,000 each.
At launch, your jackpot odds were 4 in 8 million, or 1 in 2 million.
Now the lottery reports 2 jackpots claimed and roughly 6 million tickets sold.
That means: 2 remaining jackpots across an estimated 2 million unsold tickets.
Your new jackpot odds? 1 in 1 million. That's twice as good as when the game launched.
This is the kind of shift most players never notice. They buy whatever looks good and never check whether the prizes they're chasing are even still available.
For a more detailed walkthrough of this kind of analysis, check out The Complete Guide to Lottery Analysis.
The "New Games Are Better" Myth
A lot of players assume fresh games are automatically the best choice because all the prizes are still there. That's partially true, but it misses half the picture.
Fresh games have all jackpots intact, but your odds are calculated against the full print run. If 10 million tickets were printed and 5 jackpots exist, you're looking at 1 in 2 million odds regardless of how "new" the game is.
Older games have fewer prizes, sure. But if 80% of tickets have been sold and multiple jackpots remain, your odds per ticket can be substantially better.
The age of a game tells you almost nothing by itself. What matters is the ratio of remaining prizes to remaining tickets.
I actually wrote about this timing dynamic in detail—Why January Is the Best Time to Find Scratch-Offs with Better Jackpot Odds explains how holiday launches create overlooked opportunities in older games.
Real-World Comparison: Same Price, Very Different Odds
Let's compare two $10 tickets side by side:
Ticket A (Brand New)
- 5 jackpots of $1M
- 10 million tickets printed
- 0 jackpots claimed
Jackpot odds: 5 in 10M = 1 in 2 million
Ticket B (Older Game)
- Originally 5 jackpots of $1M
- 10 million tickets printed
- 4 jackpots already claimed
- 8 million tickets sold (estimated)
Remaining: 1 jackpot across 2 million unsold tickets
Jackpot odds: 1 in 2 million (same as Ticket A)
At first glance, these look equivalent. But now consider a different scenario for Ticket B:
If 3 jackpots remain (instead of 1) with the same 2 million tickets left:
Jackpot odds: 3 in 2M = 1 in 666,667
That's 3x better than Ticket A. Same ticket price. Same state lottery. Massively different expected value.
This is exactly the kind of edge professional gamblers look for.
How to Find Better Tickets Yourself
If you want to do this analysis manually:
Go to your state lottery's scratch-off prize remaining page
Pick a few tickets at your preferred price point
Note how many top prizes launched vs. how many remain
If available, find the total tickets printed (some states publish this)
Estimate tickets sold based on game age, prize claims, and end date
Calculate: remaining jackpots ÷ estimated remaining tickets
This works. It's how I started. But it's tedious, especially when you're comparing 50+ active games across multiple price points.
If you'd rather skip the spreadsheets, Savvy Scratch pulls this data automatically for every active game in 10 states and ranks them by remaining value.
Don't Forget Second Chance Drawings
Here's something most players overlook entirely: even losing tickets can have value.
Most state lotteries run second chance programs where you can enter non-winning tickets into bonus drawings. The odds on these are often better than the original game because so few people bother to enter.
I covered this in depth in Second Chance Lotteries: The Extra Play Most People Ignore. If you're not entering your losers, you're leaving money on the table.
What Savvy Scratch Actually Does
Since I've mentioned the tool a few times, here's what it actually tracks:
- Every active scratch-off game in California, Texas, Illinois, New York, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina
- Daily updates on prizes remaining and estimated tickets sold
- Rankings by jackpot odds, overall odds, and prize value
- Alerts when odds improve significantly on specific games
- Flags for games to avoid (all top prizes gone, or poor value overall)
It's $5/month or $50/year—less than a couple of scratch-offs. If you're already spending money on tickets, it makes sense to at least know which ones give you a better shot.
Check your state's current rankings here.
A Note on Responsible Play
Even the "best" ticket based on data is still a negative expected value bet over time. The house edge in scratch-offs ranges from 25% to 50% depending on the state and game.
What data analysis does is help you get better odds within that structure. If you're going to play anyway, you might as well pick the ticket where the math is least stacked against you.
Set a budget. Stick to it. Use tools like this to make smarter choices with the money you've already decided to spend on entertainment.
The Bottom Line
The best scratch-off ticket isn't the newest one, the most expensive one, or the one with the biggest potential prize. It's the one where remaining prizes and remaining tickets create the most favorable ratio for players.
Most people never look at this data. The ones who do have a meaningful edge over everyone buying blind.
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