$20 California ticket

Reply #3

CAScratcher20 — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 07:59:05 GMT

I am also very very disappointed with how the first $20 ticket came out either, primarily because of the break even prize structures.

Most of the $5 or $10 games are structured where you can win a dollar, double up, triple up, or quadruple up at attainable odds.

$25 - 1 in 30 to win 5 dollars

$50 - 1 in 22 to double up (2.5x)

$100 - 1 in 33 to 5x

The TICKET prize is under the presumption the player will be forced by the retailer to play another ticket (where odds are they will pos... [ More ]

Reply #2

Jon D — Sat, 15 Mar 2014 01:56:21 GMT

Yeah, it's somewhat bogus for a few reasons.

Compared to other states, our $20 game is more bottom loaded. As mrcraft pointed out, 2/3 of all the winners in the game are stuffed into the lowest prize level, the combined TKT/$20 bottom two prize tiers. And that accounts for 23% of the total prize payout for the game.

Other states have only about half or less of all the winners stuffed into their lowest prize tier, which is often just a single $20 prize tier.(no Ticket prizes) And that typic... [ More ]

Reply #1

mrcraft — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 17:52:26 GMT

I see both the free ticket and $20 win as the same, although the odds are slightly different. Ultimately, you're looking at the total return on the game over time, not individual lower tier prizes while hoping to hit the top prize. The free ticket and $20 prizes make up 7,840,000 prizes or 67% of the available winning tickets. If they didn't have those two prizes in the prize pool and started the prize at say, $30 at higher odds, the interval between winners will likely be much longer for most p... [ More ]

$20 California ticket

Chacha33 — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 06:40:01 GMT

I'm new to this thread and I'm sure this was addressed but do any California players out there think it's bogus that the $5 Million Jackpot $20 ticket has both the free ticket and $20 prize? Really kind of dissuades me--and I'm guessing a lot of people--from playing (I bought five consecutive tickets and won one breakeven prize). I contacted the Lottery about this and never received a response. Makes you think that if you're going to spend $20 on the lottery, play either the Daily 3 or Hot Spot... [ More ]