Lottery Data: How to Use Numbers to Spot Scratch-Offs Worth Buying

Want to scratch smarter? It starts with data.

Not hunches. Not lucky coins. Not tips from the guy at the gas station who swears he "knows which rolls are hot."

I spent over 15 years as a professional gambler, analyzing tens of millions of poker hands and counting cards in blackjack pits across the country. The same mathematical approach that helped me win over half a million dollars lifetime applies to scratch-offs too. The difference? This data is publicly available. You just need to know how to read it. I wrote about how card counting principles translate to scratch-offs if you want the full breakdown.

In this guide, I'll show you exactly what lottery data matters, where to find it, and how to spot games that offer a better shot at winning something meaningful.

The Only Lottery Data That Actually Matters

There's a lot of noise out there about scratch-offs. Most of it is useless. When it comes to finding tickets worth buying, these are the four data points you actually need:

Total tickets printed. This is the population of the game. Every odds calculation starts here. Some states publish this directly. Others make you estimate based on prize structures.

Top prizes at launch. How many jackpots or big prizes existed when the game started? A $30 game with 6 jackpots of $5 million has very different math than one with 3 jackpots of $2 million.

Remaining top prizes today. This is where most players miss out. A game might still be on shelves with all its jackpots already claimed. Completely legal. Completely a waste of your money.

Remaining mid-tier prizes. Are there still plenty of $500 to $5,000 wins available, or just free ticket consolation prizes? The mid-tier is where most actual value lives for regular players.

Understanding these data points is exactly what separates smart players from everyone else. If you want the foundational knowledge, start with the truth about lottery odds. The short version: you want games where the ratio of remaining jackpots to remaining tickets has improved since launch.

Where to Find This Data

State lotteries publish this information. It's just usually buried in clunky spreadsheets or PDF tables that update at inconsistent intervals.

Start with your state lottery's official website. Look for:

• "Scratch-off games" or "Instant Games" section
• "Prizes Remaining" or "Remaining Prizes" pages
• Game brochures in PDF format
• Archive pages for ending or older games

Some states make this easy. California updates daily with clear prize breakdowns. Others make you dig through PDFs that haven't been updated since the Reagan administration. A few states publish total ticket counts in game rules or on the physical ticket. Most don't.

The California Lottery, for example, recently launched a $30 game with 5 jackpots of $10 million. Launch day odds: 1 in 2,600,000. But by early January, 3 jackpots had already been claimed, and ticket sales had barely dented the total pool. Your jackpot odds got worse, not better, despite time passing.

Meanwhile, an older $20 game that launched months earlier had 5 jackpots remaining out of 8 original, with only about 3 million tickets left unsold. Your shot at $2 million improved roughly 2.5x because nobody was paying attention to an October game while the flashy new ticket was on display.

This happens across dozens of games simultaneously. Some games get picked clean fast. Others quietly develop much better odds while everyone chases the shiny new releases. I wrote a whole piece on why the best odds might be hiding in last year's ticket.

Stop buying blind. Savvy Scratch tracks remaining prizes across 10 states and calculates which games have the best jackpot odds right now. Start your free trial at SavvyScratch.com or use code 20PERCENT for 20% off your first year.

How to Analyze Lottery Data By Hand

Let's walk through an example with real math.

Imagine a $10 ticket game with these specs:

• 8 million tickets printed
• 4 jackpots of $500,000
• 3 jackpots already claimed
• Estimated 6 million tickets sold

Here's what that means:

Only 2 million tickets remain in circulation. 1 jackpot still available.

Current jackpot odds: 1 in 2 million

At launch, your odds were 1 in 2 million (8 million tickets ÷ 4 jackpots). They haven't changed. But if this game had slightly different numbers, say 3 jackpots claimed with 1.5 million tickets remaining, your odds would now be 1 in 1.5 million. That's a 33% improvement that most players would never notice.

Now flip the scenario. A $20 ticket has:

• 5 jackpots originally
• 5 jackpots claimed
• Game still available in stores

That ticket is now a trap. The jackpot is mathematically impossible. You might still win $50 or a free ticket, but the dream is over. The state can legally keep selling it until the retailer runs out of stock.

About 10% of games on shelves at any time have no top prizes remaining. Without checking the data, you have no way to know which ones.

The Real Problem: Data Takes Time

Even if you understand everything above, most players face two practical problems:

It takes serious time. Prize reports update frequently. You'd need to check your state's website every few days, track changes across 50+ active games, and recalculate odds whenever something shifts. Most people have jobs.

Some states make it nearly impossible. Not all states publish total ticket counts. Sometimes you're estimating sales based on how fast mid-tier prizes are getting claimed. Others update their PDFs once a month and call it transparency.

The honest truth is: unless you genuinely enjoy spreadsheets, this gets old fast. That's why we built Savvy Scratch to automate the entire process.

How Savvy Scratch Uses This Data For You

I got tired of doing this by hand. So we built an app that does it automatically.

Savvy Scratch tracks:

• Total tickets printed (where state data is available)
• Daily updates of remaining prizes at every tier
• Ratio of big prizes vs. estimated unsold tickets
• Whether jackpot odds have improved since launch
• Games that should be avoided entirely because top prizes are gone

We pull data from state lottery websites, run the calculations, and show you which tickets in your state are actually worth buying today.

Instead of checking 50+ games by hand, you see a ranked list. The games at the top have better jackpot odds than average. The games flagged red are traps with no top prizes left.

Beyond Basic Odds: Jackpot Density

Once you understand the basics, you can start looking at jackpot density, which is a more refined way to compare games. I go deeper on this in my jackpot ratios deep dive, but here's the quick version.

Jackpot density asks: how many tickets exist per remaining jackpot?

Example:

• Ticket A: 4 jackpots left, 6 million tickets remaining = 1.5 million tickets per jackpot
• Ticket B: 2 jackpots left, 1 million tickets remaining = 500,000 tickets per jackpot

Even though Ticket A has more jackpots in absolute terms, Ticket B gives you roughly 3x better odds per ticket purchased. If both games cost the same price point, Ticket B is the smarter play.

This analysis takes seconds in the app. By hand, you're looking at 15-20 minutes per game, assuming your state even publishes the data you need.

Find your state's best games right now. We track scratch-off data across California, Texas, Illinois, New York, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina. See which tickets have the best jackpot odds today →

Don't Throw Away Your Losers

One more data point most players ignore: second chance drawings.

Most losing scratch-offs can be entered into second chance drawings for additional prizes. The math on these is often surprisingly good because so few people bother to enter.

I've seen second chance drawings where fewer than 50,000 entries competed for $100,000 in prizes. Compare that to the millions of tickets sold for the original game. If you're already buying scratch-offs, you're leaving value on the table by not entering your losers.

Check your state lottery website for second chance programs. Most require creating an account and scanning ticket barcodes, but the extra few minutes per ticket can add up to meaningful expected value over time.

What Data Can't Do

Let me be clear about something: data doesn't guarantee wins.

All scratch-offs are designed for the house to win. The state keeps roughly 30% of every dollar spent on lottery tickets. No amount of analysis changes the fundamental economics.

What data does is help you avoid truly bad games. The $20 ticket with all jackpots claimed. The new game that's already been picked clean. The older game everyone forgot about that now has 5x better odds than anything new on the rack.

The goal isn't to beat the lottery. It's to:

• Stop wasting money on games where winning big is literally impossible
• Find games where your shot at something meaningful is better than average
• Make smarter choices with money you were going to spend anyway
• Get more entertainment value per dollar

A 1 in 3 million shot feels impossible. A 1 in 400,000 shot? Still a long shot, but it's the kind of long shot where you know someone who knows someone who actually won.

That's the difference data makes.

Start Playing Smarter

You don't need a math degree to use lottery data effectively. You just need:

A way to see which games still have top prizes available

A way to compare jackpot odds across games at similar price points

The discipline to skip games that look flashy but have been picked clean

You can do this manually by checking your state lottery website every few days. Or you can let Savvy Scratch do it for you.

Get started at SavvyScratch.com — $5/month or $50/year. Less than the cost of two scratch-offs. Use code 20PERCENT for 20% off.

We track data across 10 states, update daily, and show you exactly which games have the best remaining odds. No guessing. No superstition. Just the same mathematical approach that's helped professional gamblers find edges for decades.

Let data guide you. Not luck.