What are the odds for instant tickets?
The overall odds of winning any prize on an instant ticket varies, and is approximately 1 in 3. This means that for all the tickets sold for a given game, approximately one third will be winners. This does not necessarily mean that if you buy three tickets, the third will win.
How Odds Work
The odds are simply based on two factors:
- The number of tickets printed for a game
- The number of prizes available for a game
For example: If there are 21,155,400 tickets printed and 6,141,887 prizes available for one game of Instant Crossword, the overall odds of winning would be 1 in 3.44.
How the Odds Change
As tickets are sold, the odds of some prizes change as purchased tickets are removed from the pool of available tickets.
Once a game is launched, it’s nearly impossible to track the odds due to the continually changing number of purchased tickets.
To help players make informed decisions about ticket purchases, OLG publishes the number of claimed and unclaimed prizes for each individual ticket.
Odds vary by game
Overall odds are printed on every instant ticket. To find the complete prize structure and odds of winning individual prizes, check at OLG.ca
However, the overall odds of winning any prize on instant tickets are generally 1 in 3. The odds of winning a top prize is generally closer to 1 in a million. See the back of the ticket or visit olg.ca for more accurate information.
Playing more expensive games doesn’t increase the odds of winning.
Are the odds better at certain stores?
It doesn’t matter where you buy instant tickets – the chances are the same. Why? Because tickets are randomly distributed across participating Ontario retailers, and there is no order or pattern to the way tickets are sorted.
Every store could sell a winning ticket at any given time because of the random distribution of tickets.
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