Boosting Your Chances of Winning on Scratch Cards
Playing scratch cards is one of the simplest forms of gambling. Simply reveal the symbols and if enough of them match, you win. Let’s see if there’s a way to increase your chances of securing a win.
Scratch Cards and How to Win Them
If you want to gamble for real money, you can do this in many ways – from playing casino games and betting on sports to buying lottery tickets. There are also scratch cards, which are very straightforward in their work.
Each scratch card has a number of panels, and behind these are symbols. Reveal the symbols, and if you get enough matching ones, you win a payout. The amount you win depends on the symbols you’ve matched.
When you purchase a physical scratch card, you’ll see part of it that’s coated in a special substance. Just scratch this away (many people use a coin for this) to reveal the symbols beneath.
As for digital versions of scratch cards, you can find these at many UK gambling sites. If you join one of the best scratch card sites, you’ll find dozens of them available to play.
When you play digital scratch cards, you can choose to reveal all the symbols at once or ‘scratch’ away the coating using your cursor. To do this, just drag your cursor around to remove the coating.
Online scratch cards work in the same way as printed ones. If you reveal enough matching symbols, you’ll earn a payout. The money will be added to your balance right away.
If you win when playing a physical scratch card, you must redeem it to earn your prize. You usually hand it in where you purchase it and the retailer will give you your winnings then and there.
However, for large payouts you’ll have to contact the company that made the scratch card because retailers don’t always have large amounts of cash to give out. There should be instructions on how to do this.
Scratch cards, like other forms of gambling, are safe to play. If you’re wondering ‘Are scratch cards rigged?’, the answer is no. They’re created and managed by trustworthy companies that follow strict protocols to ensure they’re both secure and fair.
Scratchcard Win Rates and Payouts
The number of symbols and the cash prizes vary from one scratch card to the next. The more valuable the symbol, the less likely you are to win with it. Makers of scratch cards usually publish the win rates.
They’ll state how likely you are to win any cash prize and the chances of winning each possible payout. We’ll give an example below using an imaginary scratch card.
- 1/30 cards wins £100
- 2/30 cards win £50
- 3/30 cards win £10
- 4/30 cards win £5
This example shows a total prize pool of £250. When you purchase a scratch card, you have a 1 in 30 chance of winning the top prize (£100) and a 1 in 3 chance of winning any prize.
The example above is shown to give you an idea. For real scratch cards, the chance of winning any prize can still be between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4, though the odds of securing the top prize are usually much lower.
This is because many scratch cards can have quite high maximum cash prizes. In the UK, there are some that can pay out tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds – or even a million pounds.
A great example is the £2 Million Blue scratch card from the National Lottery. Its top prize, of course, is a cool £2 million, though the odds of winning it are a staggering 1 in 5,738,205.
Companies typically use print run numbers to determine the chances of winning each different payout. If the print run is a million, only one scratch card could be printed with the symbols needed to win the top prize.
In this case, the odds of securing the biggest payout would be 1 in 1,000,000. If 100 cards have a £100 payout, the odds of winning this would be 1 in 1,000, i.e. 1,000,000 divided by 100.
There’s obviously no such thing as print runs for digital scratch cards, but the developers use a similar idea to determine payout rates. They decide the odds of winning each prize and arrange them so these odds are true.
If you’re wondering which scratch card is most likely to win UK, the Best Odds Guaranteed scratch card from the National Lottery has potentially the highest win rates. With this scratch card, there’s a 1 in 3.08 chance you’ll win something.
Boosting Your Chances of Winning Scratch Cards
Once you purchase a scratch card, whether physical or digital, there’s nothing you can do to increase your likelihood of winning. The symbols are already there behind the coating. All you can do is reveal them.
Scratchcards are therefore entirely based on luck. Luck alone determines whether you win or not, and if you do win, what prize you’ve earned. There’s no opportunity to use skill or strategy.
Having said that, you can increase your chances of winning scratch cards by doing one simple thing: playing scratch cards with high payout rates. Let’s say you play two scratch cards, each of which has a different win rate.
For one of them, the odds of winning any cash prize are 1 in 3.25 and for the other, the odds are 1 in 3.75. Naturally, you would go for the first one as you’re more likely to win a cash prize of any size.
Bear in mind that the cheapest scratch cards might not necessarily have the best chances of winning. If you play slightly more expensive scratch cards, ensure you stay within your budget.
When practising real money gambling, you should have a budget that you don’t go over. This should be a set amount of money that you can afford to lose and don’t need for important things, e.g. bills and household essentials.
You might also want to consider sticking with a single scratch card. If you find one with a decent total payout rate, purchase multiple copies instead of spending money on many scratch cards.
National Lottery Scratch Cards
Lastly, if you’re playing scratch cards from the National Lottery, you should check out the page on remaining jackpots. This keeps track of what scratch card prizes are left to be won and is a resource worth using.
National Lottery scratch cards have an expiration date. This applies to digital ones as well as physical ones. If the expiration date is approaching and the top prize hasn’t been won, you’ll have a slightly better chance of winning it.
Why is this the case? Let’s say there’s a print run of 2 million and only one card has the top prize. Statistically speaking, your odds of winning this maximum payout are 1 in 2,000,000.
Half of the scratch cards have been sold, and no one’s won the top prize. You purchase a scratch card and your chances of winning are now 1 in 1,000,000.
There’s still just one top prize, and yet the total number of scratch cards with the top prize is 1,000,000.
If you’re wondering if there are any lottery scratch card secrets UK, there aren’t any. When it comes to increasing your scratch card win rates, it’s simply a matter of knowing payout rates and hoping for the best.
