How to get a winning ticket everytime...

I found this article, while surfin around. Anyone's opinion on if this could work>

How To Get A Winning Scratch Ticket - Every Time

The Catch: Profit Not Guaranteed

(WBZ) What if we told you there's a way to guarantee you'll buy a winning Lottery ticket?

You'd probably say, "Impossible."

But there is, playing the popular scratch tickets.

According to the Lottery Commission, for $1, $2 and $5 instant games there will be no more than 15 consecutive losing tickets in a string of tickets.

So if you buy 16 consecutive cards, you'll have at least one winning ticket. For the $10 games you'd need to buy 13 tickets.

"I've done it before," one Lottery player said. "There's definitely one or two dollars in there on a string, if not more."

To find out for ourselves, we took a couple of hundred dollars in cash to Kiki's Kwik Mart in Brighton.

We bought strings of $1, $2 and $10 tickets. Grand total: $226. Let the scratching begin!

It worked. In each string there was at least one winning ticket. But did we make money?

Not on the $1 and $2 strings. We spent $96 on those but won only $15.

But on the $10 tickets we spent $130 and came away with $255.

So what gives? The Lottery says the games are set up this way to ensure that each player has an equal chance of winning a prize, but says this will not help you beat the odds.

"The Lottery Commission understands the mathematics very well," said Prof. Tom Sherman, a Northeastern University mathematician.

Sherman said even though the math is important, it's really marketing at work here.

"You have to give people who are going to play the game a certain amount of winning," he said. "If you don't do that, they'll stop playing the game."

So even though knowing how these games work will give you a winning ticket, it doesn't guarantee you'll end up with a profit.

No one from the Lottery would appear on camera for this story. But they sent us a statement saying "as far as a formula for success, we'll leave that up to our players

Sounds like a good plan.

I heard of a scratch player who would not buy scratchers just a couple or three at a time.

He would buy his scratchers from a roll of 100 dollars or more.

He said the chances are better buying in bulk from the same roll.

I knew of a person who would buy scratch offs in bundles of 15 or 20.  That was the only way to win according to them.  THey never [layed any other games; just scrathch offs.

They don't mention that they bought any $5 tickets.  Would have been interesting to see how that would have worked out.

I wonder what state this was from?

The Texas lottery actually markets their tickets in a similar way.  They gaurantee a set amount of prizes in each pack of tickets they sell.  You can even find the information on their website. 

Brad

Probably all states market them this way.  As the article said, if they didn't, people would get too few winners and stop playing.

The inherent problem with playing this way though is.....okay, you can't go 15 tickets without a winner. But what if the winner was the last ticket sold before you got there, and the next one was 15 tickets down?  You buy the 15 tickets and get one winner.  And unless its a biggie, you don't cover your cost, and you lose.

WBZ is in Boston, so it's probably MA.

FYI - one time many years ago I bought the last 15 tickets on a $1 roll in MA - 13 straight losers, one $1 "winner" and another loser.  So, yes, I guess it does work, sort of.