Instant tickets - "Approximate overall odds of winning"

Reply #3

duckman — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:41:45 GMT

The odds listed are for 2 separate things:

The odds of winning any prize ($2,$3,$5,$10,$20,$40,$100) are 1 in 4.52

The odds of winning a $2 (or breakeven) prize is 1 in 7.50

Reply #2

Coin Toss — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 16:48:56 GMT

That used to be the case, but people wanted to know why they had to settle for a free ticket and not get the price of a winning ticket back, so now the break even prize is the price of the ticket.

Reply #1

johnph77 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:07:05 GMT

Possibly because one of the break-even prizes is another ticket but not cash

Instant tickets - "Approximate overall odds of winning"

Coin Toss — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:16:53 GMT

This is off of the back of an Illinois ticket ($2 in this case) but probably pertains to all states.

Verbatim:

Approximate ods of winning (including break even prizes) are: 1 in 4.52, $2-1 in 7.50, $3- 1 in 21.43, $5- 1in 50.00, $10-1 in 75.00, $20- 1 in 600.00, $40- 1 in 1,170.73, $100- 1 in 181.82

($100 is the top prize on this ticket)

My question is, it being a $2 ticket, what is the difference between a break even prize and the $2 prize? It's a $2 ticket and there is no prize low... [ More ]