Hundreds of millions of scratch cards are sold each year in the UK, with punters hoping to win life-changing sums of money in an instant.
You’re more likely to be struck by lightning than win big — but hope often trumps reality for consumers chasing Lady Luck.
However, a 26-year-old technology consultant from Clapham wants to improve your chances with his new website, smartscratchcard.co.uk.
Will Love has spent months analysing National Lottery data to evaluate the odds of winning prizes for different scratch cards — which cost from £1 to £5 and offer prizes of up to £2 million.
Though he enjoys a stable 9-to-5 job with a business and IT firm, he has a passion for sports and projects outside of his work.
This scratch card website is his newest venture, and it went live only a week ago, on July 13.
It lists the cards you can buy and puts an estimate on your true odds of bagging the top prize — or indeed any money at all.
He was inspired to create the site after learning that scratch cards remain available to buy in shops even when there is no top prize money left — so you’re effectively running a race for which someone is already holding the trophy.
‘It shocked me to learn how scratch cards are sold for jackpots that have already been won,’ says Mr Love. ‘It’s a joke really.’
One game tantalises buyers with the possibility of winning £100,000 a year for 20 years — but the winning tickets have already been scratched.
No new cards for this game can be printed, but those already on display can still be sold.
The odds of winning a prize are printed on the back of a scratch card, however these relate to all cash prizes — even those that are £1.
And you’d need to dig deeper on the National Lottery’s website to find out more about the top prize you’re hoping to win.
Huge choices: There are many different card games to choose from, with price points ranging from £1 to £5 per card. Prizes vary from £50 to £2m
Mr Love is giving consumers a more detailed breakdown of their chances by pulling data from the National Lottery website and calculating an estimate of the true odds — though he admits the precise figure is difficult to establish.
Importantly, his website shows if there is prize money left.
Details are available across a range of games, including Monopoly Gold, Bingo Multiplier, Cosmic Cash and Play Your Stars Right.
Smartscratchcard.co.uk also provides an ‘algorithm score’ against each ticket type.
The score takes into account a ‘return to player’ value — the percentage of money that will be given back to gamblers — the number of top prizes remaining and the odds of winning. The higher the algorithm score, the better.
Any game where the top prizes have all been pocketed already instantly receives an algorithm score of zero.
‘Your odds of winning are so small, but I want to give people transparency so that they know that,’ says Mr Love.
‘If you’re going to have a bit of fun and go for a top prize, at least you can see what the estimated odds are.’
Rules approved by the regulator, the Gambling Commission, state that no new scratch card batches for any one game can be sold after the final top prize has been claimed, though this only applies to prizes worth £121,000 or more.
Of the scratch cards reviewed on Mr Love’s website, more than a third had a top prize of less than £121,000.
A spokesman for Camelot, which operates the National Lottery, says: ‘Top-prize scratch card information is fully available on the National Lottery website and can also be found on our in-store digital media screens — so at the point of purchase in shops.’
He also points out that scratch cards come with a number of potential prizes, adding: ‘So even when there are no top prizes or only one top prize remaining, there are still lots of other prizes available to be won from the remaining prize pool.’
