Is it possible to beat them? I saw an android app called Pikatikit which claims it can download information about the remaining prizes and somehow rank the games for each state. Could someone more mathematically inclined tell me if this is possible?

you could always do that by visiting the states lottery website. It is pretty easy to figure out which games have the best prizes remaining.

I wouldn't assume the information the state discloses about winning tickets remaining is accurate -- and I haven't seen any states that disclose the number of tickets remaining.

the only way you can beat them is if you see someone lose like 5 in a row on a ticket, then u jump in front and buy the next 2 and youll probably win.

As ridiculous as the strategy sounds -- there may be a foundation for it. In the past, the distribution of winners in many games has not been random -- the winners were random, but the distribution was governed. Not sure if or who is still doing that.

Can't you extrapolate the number of tickets remaining using the published "approximate odds" of holding a winning ticket? The published "approximate odds" change over time.

I useda buy them by the book and for example if the odds of winning a prize is 1:4.25 and you bought a unopened book of 100 tickets youll get 23- 24 winners guaranteed and this was always the case.

I have won 3 tickets in a row before, lost 17 in a row before, I was a regular and the gas station people useda tell me which books were in good shape(meaning most the book was sold and there were lots of winners left or biggest prize cashed so far was like $50)

i might sound crazy but im right, many yrs of evidence to determine it.

how much did the book for 100 net you?

I'm not sure how all states do it. I've looked at the local AZ site and it offers very little -- it tells how many tickets remain, but not how many there were. It's all a bit sketchy. I've read several comparison reports on all state lotteries, and it's clear that most, if not all, are similarly opaque -- always many pages of footnotes explaining the accounting discrepancies.

I doubt they can really track how many tickets remain, since they sell them in batches, and unknown quantities of those batches are remaining to be sold under store counters.

Shouldn't they be able to infer the rolls which have been sold by the winner codes which are redeemed? I guess the answer is they probably just don't care that much. Anyway, just for giggles I followed Pikatikit's advice last night and bought a couple of the best-ranked $20 game for Virginia and scored a $200 winner. I know, small sample size, but still promising...

The app or even just looking at their websites may not give you the exact current odds but it definitely gives you a small advantage. If you walk into a store and they have 25 games to pick from and you just pick based on what looks fun you may be picking a game where the top prizes are all gone. At least by looking at their websites you can make an informed decision on which games have the most prizes remaining.

The sale of tickets are recorded by UPC scans -- so I believe they can track them, and that the information is available to some people -- they just don't share it with the public in any transparent way.

I was thinking about the comment Mark275 made about buying a brick of tickets. The way they used to be sold here, the retailer would buy a $500 brick that had $150 in small winners for ~$300 -- and tickets had to be redeemed where they were purchased. The difference accounted for the retail commission. That system was gamed for years (plus, unredeemed tickets accrued to the benefit of the retailer instead of the state), so it was eventually changed.

Like all things the state attempts, their lotteries are FUBAR -- and I have no doubt there are investment opportunities -- I just wouldn't trust much of the public information to be complete, timely, or accurate.

This story provides zero meaningfulness and a fairly small sample size..

After high school I worked overnights in a gas station and I'd see so many degenerates buying tickets. Tons of people would buy them and scratch off right there, turn around and put right back in.

After awhile I noticed that one game always had a $50 winner in the last three tickets of the roll. The guy I worked with starting splitting it and we'd always buy the end of a roll of that ticket. He'd actually push that ticket to people looking to buy or drunks even just coming in for smokes or whatever just to get closer to the end.

We never hit a bigger ticket. It was always a $50 winner and once we got a $100. After cost and some putting it back into similar tickets to see if others were like that which we didn't find any other games at the end, we made out with an extra $500 or so each.

In certain jurisdictions, it's legal for places to sell private (i.e. not state run) lottery tickets. Generally they're called pull tab, punch card, "pickle cards," or a variety of other names. With these tickets, the merchant buys a block of tickets, perhaps 2500 of them, and there are a specific number of each prize in each block of tickets. So if you know how many of each ticket have been pulled, you can estimate what's left. I..e if out of the 2500 tickets, 2000 have been sold but the biggest prize hasn't been sold, you know the biggest prize is still remaining. No way to get rich off of these though because the biggest prize is usually $100, or perhaps $250 at most.