Online Scratch Offs
Reviewing the best online lottery scratchoff sites that are legally licensed to accept USA players.
Online Scratch Offs For Money
Since the dawn of mankind, people have found ways to gamble. History shows us that even in ancient civilizations like Egypt and China and Rome, people gambled on a wide variety of games. While our games in 2016 might look a lot better, be more plentiful, and a lot more easily accessible thanks to the Internet, the fact is that we're no different culturally than our ancestors who loved to play games of chance. There's a thrill provided when you're risking money for a shot at winning a lot more money. Gambling deals directly with our base instincts as human beings to have more. We want those millions of dollars. We want to win while gambling.
Legal Betting Online recognizes that gambling is a widespread genre, not only dealing with sports or online casino games. This is why we try to touch on a little bit of everything, even scratch off lottery tickets. Earning billions of dollars in revenue every year, scratch-offs are huge in the United States, and most states allow them. Some only cost a buck and might pay out a few thousand dollars, while some tickets cost $20 or more and can turn you into an instant millionaire. But can you buy online scratchoff lottery tickets legally in the US? Our guide answers all the questions you have and even the ones that you wouldn't think to ask.
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What Are Scratch Off Tickets?
In all the gambling topics we have ever covered, scratch off lottery tickets are perhaps the easiest to explain. In essence, these are pieces of paper that have winning or losing number combinations on them. The numbers are covered up by a sort of thick film that must be scratched off. This covering keeps the tickets a mystery, and so people who buy a scratcher don't know if they've won or lost until after they've scratched off the covering, typically using a coin or their fingernail. With online scratch off tickets, the same principle applies. Only you will use your computer's mouse, or finger on a touchscreen, to scratch away the covering.
These tickets are produced typically by states, or at least sanctioned by the state, and they are available in dozens of varieties. You can find tickets for $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, $20, and some tickets might even cost you $50 to try your luck! Your odds of winning depend on the ticket you buy. It should tell you what your chances of winning are; e.g. '1 in 4 tickets win; 1 in 6 tickets win, 1 in 2 tickets win.' This usually also depends on the amount. For instance, if you're paying $20 for a ticket, you'll probably find that 1 in 4 win, whereas a $1 ticket might have odds like 1 in 10 winning. Winning amounts also depend entirely on the ticket itself. Some pay out a few hundred or few thousand dollars, while some have very large jackpots that can reach a million or more.
Is Playing Online Scratch Off Tickets Legal In The US?
Two very quick, very simple points to make here. Point #1: It is perfectly legal, no matter where you live in the US, to play a scratch off lottery ticket and to be eligible to win. No states, nor the federal government, have laws which stop you from purchasing a scratch off ticket where you can find one legally offered. So, yes, they're legal for you to play as a US citizen. Point #2: Not every state offers legal tickets. This doesn't mean they're illegal for you to play if you live in that state; it just means your state doesn't offer them.
To point 2, there are six states in the USA that do not allow legal lotteries like scratch off tickets: Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah. One can understand the morality police in Utah not offering scratchers, but what's with Mississippi and Nevada? These states have hundreds of legal on-location casinos. And that's the crux. These states want you supplying revenue to their brick-and-mortar establishments. They don't want you putting money into a lotto machine. Though if you're in Mississippi and go buy you some scratch offs from Louisiana, you're operating perfectly within the law, per point 1.
Best Lottery Website To Play Online Scratchoff Lottery Tickets In The US
Betonline is a household name in the sports betting industry. And in early 2015, they started offering their players online scratch card games. They award all new players an amazing 200% bonus up to $5000 free, and have many scratch off games to choose from.
Pros
- All U.S. players accepted
- Very trusted name in online gambling
- 24/7 customer service
- Casino, poker, sports and lottery available
- Fast and easy deposits and withdrawals
- Mobile betting app available
Cons
- Nominal fees on deposits
| Site | Review | Bonus Offer | USA | Visit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Poker Sites | ||||
| Read Review | 200% Max $5,000 | Play now | ||
| Read Review | 25% Max $3,000 | Play now | ||
FAQ's About Playing Online Scratchoff Tickets
Which Tickets Are Good Options? - Some people believe there are ways by which you can spot a winning ticket before buying it. They believe that winning tickets have thicker ink lines between the perforations. They believe that if you hit a winning ticket on a reel, you must wait until 4 or 5 more tickets go off the reel before getting a winner. They believe they have a system. However, when these tickets are made in the factories, they're completely random. You might purchase a roll of 20 and not hit a single ticket, and the person behind you might buy a roll of 5 and hit on every one. It's all random. If you're looking for a good ticket options, what you're looking for are odds vs. payouts.
For instance, let's say a $1 ticket gives you a 1 in 8 shot of winning, with an average prize of $5. So, this would be hard to profit on. You buy 8 tickets, only win $5, you're out $3. You'd have to be very lucky to hit something like $20 or $50 to come out on top in the long run. A $10 ticket, on the other hand, might give you a 1 in 3 shot at winning, with the average prize being $20. Still not ideal odds in your favor, but a heck of a lot better. Now, a $20 ticket may give you a 1 in 2 shot of winning, with the average prize being $50. These odds are more in your favor. However, these odds are created to entice you to play for more money, so be careful shoveling sawbucks into the machine. Just because the odds are 1 in 2 doesn't mean you're guaranteed to win 50% of the time. And just because the average win is $50 doesn't mean anything in the aggregate. You can win $5, with every 10 $5 winners getting $500, and it's still an average of $50, though meaningless to the 9 who hit $5. You can lose 10 in a row, and since the odds are calculated over millions of tickets made, it's just your bad luck. Your best ticket option will be something that gives you decent odds of hitting a winning ticket without having to spend too much money. This will typically be in the $5-$10 range, but there are simply no guarantees.
Can I Play Scratch Off Tickets Online? -Technology has been consistently improving in the realm of online games, and today's gaming sites do provide a range of options for playing scratch off tickets. Now, that's not to say that every online casino will provide this option. It's still much more of a niche game. Because scratch off tickets are so widespread throughout the nation, with only a handful of states not offering them, the online market for such a game/activity isn't very large. It's not like, say, poker, where only a few states offer this on location. Most people can find scratch off tickets everywhere, and so the demand has never forced the Internet to create a big supply. However, many sites do offer these tickets.
An online scratch off ticket is essentially the same as one you'll purchase at a store. It's digital, of course, but how the game operates is still the same. You will receive a card that has number combinations under a covering. You will remove the covering to reveal the numbers, and then see if you won any sort of prize. Purchasing your tickets online, you should be able to find tickets with different odds, different dollar amounts, and different prize amounts.
Are Scratch Off Tickets Fair? - Now for the million-dollar question, possibly literally: Are scratch off lottery tickets fair? Many reports exist out there about tickets not having enough winners per tickets purchased, and some states like Illinois are actually so dysfunctional that they are not paying lottery winners. By and large, however, most tickets are fair. Most ticket lines do provide winners per their estimated win scale, and most will pay you if you win and the bar code scanned says your ticket is a winner.
Online tickets may operate by different standards. To know if these are fair, it really depends on the website on which you're playing these tickets. For instance, if the casino where you find scratch off tickets isn't reputable and isn't received well, then you shouldn't expect that the tickets are going to be fair. They are probably more tilted in the house's favor so that they can collect more money. Contrarily, an online establishment with a solid reputation for fair play is going to provide you with fair lottery tickets. So it boils down to location and reputation. For a reputable site, it really doesn't make any sense to cheat players. They already make hundreds of millions of dollars per year, and by default lottery games are a guaranteed winner for the house anyways.
How Do I Collect Winnings? - If playing online, everything is instant. Meaning you can instantly scratch off the tickets, and you will instantly get paid when you win. For example if you win $100, your available balance would increase by $100.
Understanding Bonus Terms - It's very important that you understand the terms and conditions of any promotion you take advantage of. For example Betonline offers players an incredible 200% bonus up to $5000. In order to be able to cashout any winnings, you must rollover your deposit + bonus a certain amount of times. This essentially stops any abuse from players who are looking to take advantage of a casino, without genuinely risking their own money.
Your Guide To Playing Scratch Off Lottery Tickets
Pick Your Ticket - Picking your ticket isn't always going to be as simple as putting the money in and selecting which ticket you want. Technically speaking, that's all there is to the process of buying a ticket, but what's more important here is that you purchase a ticket whose odds are more in your favor. You're never going to have quite even-money odds, or the odds in your favor explicitly, but, for instance, a ticket that's 1 in 4 is better than 1 in 8, so choose tickets based on your likelihood of winning. If this means spending $5 instead of $1, it will pay off more in the long run.
Scratch it Off - Okay, this step seems axiomatic, and there's really no reason for us to say anything about it, right? Well, we want to urge some caution here when scratching. If you damage the numbers or the bar code by handling a real ticket too roughly, you may end up having difficulties when cashing it in. So scratch off gently, just hard enough to remove the covering.
Look Carefully at the Rules - Look very, very carefully at the rules. Some tickets don't want you scratching off more than one column or section, and scratching off the entire ticket will render it void. Some tickets have complex rules, like you have to add up all numbers in a row to beat the dealer's (house/card) number, and so you might win while actually thinking you've lost if, for instance, you overlook a number. Again, this is another one that seems axiomatic, but it's always best to exercise caution and to read the fine print so that you understand how the ticket is played.
Online Scratch Offs Tickets
Legal Betting Online knows just how insanely popular scratch off tickets are, and we know that a lot of our base, even if they primarily play poker or blackjack, also love to play the scratchers. We hope this guide has given you some important information about the genre. Don't forget to check out our casino reviews to find the most reputable sites to buy your tickets!
Win Real Cash Online Instantly
If you are looking for the regular lottery tickets such as Powerball and Megamillions instead of scratchoffs, check out our Legal US online lottery guide that contains everything you need about where to buy these tickets.
Lotteries are big business indeed, and spending on lotteries simply dwarf other forms of gambling, mostly due to its superior access and marketing. Lotteries also offer the appeal of a shot at a huge payout, and a big part of their appeal for many players is imagining what they would do if they were fortunate enough to get a big win, in spite of the very low probability of this ever happening.
Conventional lottery drawings do involve a considerable time lag between the purchase and getting the results, although this doesn’t discourage a lot of people. However, for many, the opportunity to reduce the waiting time from days to literally seconds is plenty appealing indeed, and this is exactly what scratch games do.
Best Online Casinos with Scratch Off Games
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Normally, when you buy a lottery ticket, you have to wait until the drawing takes place, which occurs on a periodic basis, once a week or once every couple of weeks. People buy tickets over this time and then the numbers are drawn and announced and players check their tickets to see if they won anything.
It isn’t really necessary to only have the drawings done periodically though, as the payouts are based upon probability and not how many tickets are sold, and in theory the lottery could do a “draw” each time a ticket was purchased and deliver instant results to the player.
There is some logic though behind periodic draws as it’s easier to market big jackpots in the media if it’s done in a fixed manner, rather than akin to a progressive jackpot which can grow larger by the second. Because it isn’t static, lotteries couldn’t advertise a certain number and being able to do so does contribute a lot to their sales, as many players get more excited as jackpots grow and will purchase even more tickets to try to cash in.
Scratch Games Offer A Quick and Easy Alternative
The technology for instant lotteries has been around since the 1970s, and in 1987 the first patent was issued for a scratch lottery format, where players would simply scratch off areas of a ticket to reveal pre-determined prizes.
So the company would issue a batch of tickets with prizes distributed on them based upon the desired odds and payouts, then they would be offered for sale. In this sense, the lottery results have already been drawn, and players would then purchase random tickets to them to seek an chance at winning the prizes.
As it turned out, this was a great idea, as it removes the wait time completely, other than the anticipation of doing the scratching, which does form an important part of the experience for many players.
Some players like to scratch their tickets slowly, paying close attention to the results as they go, and using that to build up their excitement and anticipation, while others may prefer to scratch the whole ticket at once and accelerate the experience even more. It’s your ticket though and you may scratch it however you like.
While the size of jackpots with scratch tickets is more limited than conventional lottery draws, the prizes do tend to be quite a bit higher than you would see with most casino games, and this also helps fuel the appeal for them. Like casino games though, payouts do tend to be more widely distributed, in other words more frequent smaller wins, much like a slot machine would pay out, to keep players’ interest and have them keep buying and playing.
Virtual Scratch Games
Online casinos have now gotten into this game with the offering of virtual scratch tickets as part of their casino software, and like other online casino games, these are available both in instant play through a browser, and by downloading the online casino’s software.
The process is the same, other than the fact that you don’t actually physically scratch the cards, you use a mouse to click instead, although graphics are generally provided to make the experience seem more real.
There is no real difference though between a physical and virtual scratch ticket, other than the online version is more accessible, you don’t have to go to a lottery booth to buy them, you don’t have to leave your home at all, and can even play on the go on your mobile device.
Online scratch cards also tend to have much more player friendly odds than scratch tickets offered by lotteries, which are famous for their very high edge. Lotteries enjoy a sort of monopoly though and can get away with that, where online casinos aggressively compete with each other and this serves to drive down the house edge to levels much more comparable with other casino games.
In a real sense, online scratch games are very similar to slots, the same idea just being presented in a different graphical format. Online scratch tickets aren’t anywhere near as popular as slots though, for whatever reason, but it is a fast growing form of gambling, and is certainly an enjoyable one for those looking for an experience that is both simple and relaxing and also a lot of fun.