What happens when you buy £104 worth of scratchcards.

laiman

laiman

laiman

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Ever wondered what might happen if you buy a ton of scratchcards at once?

Well wonder no more! lol

So I'm at work today and my colleague buys 3 scratchcards with the total cost of £4 on his break. From those he wins £50 on one, £2 on another and £4 on the third. Deciding its his lucky day he takes £6 and buys another 5 cards winning himself another £10 and £4 on those. On a roll he buys another 4 but gets nothing back. Not a bad lot of results for a purely luck enterprise.

He then decides to do a little experiment figuring that he had nothing to start with right? So he buys £50 worth (45 cards) and from that lot the total winners were a surprising £43, certainly not as big a loss as I would have predicted.

Now in a somewhat ridiculous fit of addiction/stupidity he buys another £40 worth (40 cards) eventually getting £28 back, a larger loss but still not to shabby.

So in summary,

Total Cost:4+6+4+50+40=£104

Total Winnings:56+14+43+28=£141

Total Profit:141-104=£37

Now obviously he would have been better off to just keep his original two sets of winnings but to be honest he fared a lot better than I would have predicted. Again this is just how that set of cards turned out so I doubt he would get similar results if it was repeated tomorrow. I'm certainly not sugesting it as a way to make money as he obviously lost out buying large numbers it's just a little story I thought I'd share.
 
Means nothing really, he could just as likely have lost the lot or come away with £100,000 in his bin *shrug*
 
Yup, was a huge wad of non winners, he nearly threw out a tenner until I had a look through them! lol

Exactly as I said just a story, no particular meaning.

He was on break?
 
A few years ago there was a special Xmas card that cost £2. You were almost guaranteed to win £1.50 on every card for some reason. In fact I don't think I bought a single 'losing' card. Obviously this is still a profit for camelot but a lot of people (including me) got sucked in by the 'winnings'.
 
Strife212 said:
The odds of winning scratchcards are actually pretty high for low amounts.
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About 1:4.9 I think for the £1 cards. Better odds the more expensive they are, about 1:3.5 for the £5 ones? It says on them any way :)

Pretty sure there is a website somewhere which tells you which type of scratchcards have had the big prizes won on them, so you know which ones not to bother with :)
 
I think the £50 win on one of the first cards was the main reason for the end result. I think that's how scratchcards work, they keep giving you small winnings that will, in most cases, be less than you spend. A bit like a fruit machine.
 
I used to play £5 a week on the lotto's online site. It's like their normal scratchcards but online, and you use your computer's mouse to scratch off the panels. I started off with beginner's luck, not necessarily winning but the £5 did last for the best part of an hour (if I lost it all), and sometimes I would be up. Last year though, like the flick of a lightswitch, the gameplay went down the drain. £5 lasted me 5 minutes max. After 6 weeks of continued poor gameplay, I set my weekly limit to £0, effectively closing my scratchcard account. I still occasionally buy the 'real' ones and I usually get a win in every 2 cards that I buy, usually only £1 or £2 though.
 
lol this thread made me think I would give those instant win games on the lottery site a go, I popped in £5 to play the £1 a play games, out of that £5 I have played 68 £1 games and won £60, not bad really :)

Withdrew £50 back to the bank and left the rest in for another day.
 
....but you never hear about the big winners though, what about these £10k a month for life or whatever? I used to buy them a lot but now I've given up, but like most I'll buy an odd one (not that I can remember the last time I did so).

Pure luck for a irregular buying person, but for a regular I bet the story isn't so lucky.
 
Azza said:
People still buy scratch cards?
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Every time I by my copy of the Gruniad at the local paper shop you can guarantee 10 people in front of me carry a Sun and will bye a scratch card and then spend 2 minutes picking which one.

I need to buy my copy of the Gruniad in a less chavy newsagent to be fair.
 
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