@ MattFromPA
PA lottery is tough, I think I've just been extremely lucky these past two or three months by pulling in these
$500 winning tickets. Odds on finding one are pretty bad, maybe it's just luck or maybe it's just making up for
the dozens of those $20 tickets I bought in years past without a single winning ticket? I dunno, but please don't
take my "streak" as the norm. I hope you do have a few nice winners come your way.
As far as only playing $20 tickets, I wouldn't go that route. $20 tickets can be very unforgiving, but the bigger winners
are there. My current strategy for playing $20 tickets is to never buy less than 2 at a time and to never buy more than 5.
If I buy three or five, I usually select a $20 ticket that I don't normally play as the odd ticket.
$100 worth of instants is a lot for me to spend in one shot, not necessarily from a financial standpoint of not having the
money to spend but from a standpoint of considering that a lot of money to gamble with at one time. 5 is usually my limit
and the only times I've ever gone over that is when I got stupid and started to chase after a big string of $20 losers. I think
the worst streak I had been on was something like 11 or 12 losers in a row before finding a $500 ticket on golden ticket, all from the same
roll in a matter of about ten min. Your best bet is to buy what your going to buy, take them home and let the chips fall where they may.
Standing in the store scratching with more cash in your pocket can be a bad thing. Also, usually if I hit decent on a roll of tickets I won't play
that roll anymore.
I don't recall really ever winning anything significant on a $1, $2, or $3 ticket. I really don't play them all that often, but I rarely ever
win more than a free ticket or a few dollars on them. In the past two months, I know of a guy in town who hit 1K twice on the $3 christmas ticket.
I mainly play $5, $10, and $20 tickets. I buy $5's in groups of 4 and usually go with groups of 2 in the 10's and 20's. I also go on to PA Lottery and
look at the prizes remaining for each game. Unless it's a game that I really like to play for one reason or another, I go with the tickets that have the
most amount of top prizes left. Right now, for me, the new $20 is the only one worth playing as it has all of its top prizes still out there and about
double the amount of $250 and $500 winners which is a much more likely prize to win. Honorable mention would go to Peppermint Payout because
I can imagine that thousands of books of tickets were sold over the Christmas holiday. Gives you slightly better odd's I would think at a top prize.
Everyone plays differently though, this is just the way I think and play.
@Omiller
Ouch man, I've been there though and was nearly there yesterday. If I had stuck to my original plan of only trying two of the new $20's
I'd have walked out with zip and the next guy to grab tickets would have got at least the $500 winner. The scenario I keep playing out
in my head is where I play tickets from a pack that someone else wins a big prize from. It's strange, like the next time I play the $30 ticket
someone else will win 300K or 3 Million from that roll. Would just make me sick!
Nice wins on those tickets btw, esp the $30 ticket. I usually never win on that, I almost never buy them anymore.