i can give you my experiences as a person who sells scratchoffs 5 days aweek, all clerks mgrs etc do have an advantage at knowing if there was a hit or not in a certain book,but that is only if there is a player that scratches their tickets in the store.most people that i sell to take their tickets home and do them and i never know if they had won anything or not,its all about info clerks usually do know what has hit and what hasnt,but only on their shifts.i recently sold 8 5.00 tickets in a row to someone who did them in the store with no winners,so i took the next 2 and they were losers aswell (i couldnt believe it)now with that knowlegde of that particular game i now know that the rest of that book has to have some winners in it.the best advice i have is to ask the person selling the tickets if they play or not,if they dont then i would play at that store.also keep an eye on the stores that showcase winning tickets by displaying them somewhere, if you notice a winner that hasnt been up there ask when it was won and there you now know not to play that book until its sold out
mike