Lottery Scratch Cards

Official lottery scratchpads should only ever be bought from official outlets of the National Lottery (often newsagents), which can normally be found displaying the official logo. They involve scratching off the latex coating from a card to display a series of numbers of symbols. Sometimes it will be a case of matching three values to win that amount of money, while other times you need to match a number of symbols, which then equate to a monetary value.

The main attraction of scratch cards is the buzz of an instant win. There’s no waiting around, just a quick thrill if you have a winning card. There’s no waiting around for your prize either, as you can normally claim your winnings instantly from any official outlet, at least up to a certain prize value. For higher value prizes, you’ll need to contact the prize line, but before doing anything, you should write your name, address and any other required details on the back of the card.

For all wins, the security code on the ticket will be checked by a scanner against computer records, either by a lottery official for a big win, or by a member of staff at the outlet. This is done to verify that the card is a genuine winner and not a forgery.

There is no real way to turn a consistent profit from lottery scratch cards. The average chances of winning, as published on the back of each card do not tell the whole story, as those statistics include the chances of getting a scratch card that merely returns your stake – hardly what most people would refer to as a win.

It has been suggested that the market is flooded with more winning scratch cards when a new game is released, to stimulate demand for the new game and encourage repeat purchases. This is highly unlikely, since winning cards are supposed to be distributed randomly within rolls of tickets and should therefore not be a reason to buy more tickets.

There are other scratch cards that you can purchase for competitions run by other organisations. You should be careful with this sort of game. Some of them are fund raising games run by a charity, football clubs or other bona fide establishments, where you can be fairly confident that the game is being run legitimately (even so you may want to examine the terms and conditions). Others, however, will be run with by slightly less reputable companies, leaving you with very low chances of success and potential difficulty when it comes to claiming prizes.