With regard to a mapping strategy, I do have a PA map on my bulletin board that
I use to keep track of all jackpot winners during the life of a particular game.
My favorite scratcher games are the Cash For Life games.
I track those, and a couple of other favorites, on my map board.
I use different color pins for each game sticking the pin on the winners
home town or winning vendor.
When a game ends I magic mark the winning spots and start a new map.
I can then overlay maps from game to game and check for any patterns.
Its a rather crude but very effective tool to graph big winner locations.
With each of the games I track I have seen the same approximate distribution patterns.
There are a few variables but the games I track seem to follow the same traffic lanes
for high dollar winners.
Also, its a lot of work to stop the press and change plates for winning/losing tickets all the time.
To be cost effective I think the printer runs all the winning tickets at the same time so they tend
to all get lumped together and shipped out at the same time.
Hence the big winners tend to follow the same traffic lanes.
I can't say how many are following a given strategy or not.
I've only run across a few people that were hip to my "_mark" theory.
And I don't have any insight as to who could cheat the game system or how.
I e.mailed the lottery once and asked if anyone there knew where the jackpot tickets went to.
They said no and that its an entirely computerized process and tickets are shipped at random.
If so, why do the jackpot winners seem to follow a clear distribution pattern??
I also asked if they hide the jackpot tickets in a vault and ship them out last (so as to keep sales
going till the end of the game).
They denied this affirming that ALL tickets are shipped out when the game starts.
You can check the stats on the remaining prizes of any game to gauge this.
Well, that just about sums it up.
I can't think of any other tips but I'm all ears and open to any suggestions.
Like Gus always says, "Keep On Scratchin".