How to Read a Scratch-Off Remaining-Prize Table
The remaining-prize table is the one genuinely informative document a lottery publishes. Every state we cover puts one out for each active game, usually updated daily. Learning to read it is most of what separates a considered scratch-off purchase from a random one.
The columns
A typical table has four:
| Prize | Odds | Total | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000,000 | 1 in 1,200,000 | 5 | 2 |
| $10,000 | 1 in 120,000 | 50 | 31 |
| $500 | 1 in 12,000 | 500 | 190 |
| $20 | 1 in 120 | 50,000 | 21,400 |
- Prize — the amount for that tier.
- Odds — the printed chance of hitting that tier, fixed at the print run.
- Total — how many of that prize the game was printed with.
- Remaining — how many have not yet been claimed.
Some states publish only Total and Remaining and leave you to derive the odds. Some publish cumulative odds instead (“this amount or more”), which is a different number and not comparable tier-by-tier. We normalise all of them to the same shape.
The first thing to look at
Compare remaining to total, tier by tier, and compare that ratio across tiers.
In the table above, the $20 tier has 43% of its prizes left. The $500 tier has 38%. The $10,000 tier has 62%. That spread is the signal. The large prizes are proportionally less claimed than the small ones, which means the money still in the game is concentrated at the top.
Now compare all of it to how far through the game is. If roughly 55% of tickets have sold and a tier still holds 62% of its prizes, that tier is running behind — more of it is left than you would expect at this point.
The second thing: the top prize is not the whole story
Most sites, and most players, look only at the top row. It is the least useful one.
Top prizes are rare by construction. A game with two $1,000,000 prizes left out of five sounds promising, but at 1 in 1,200,000 you will not hit one, and neither will anybody you know. The tiers that determine what actually happens to your money are the ones in the middle — the $100 to $1,000 band, where the prizes are numerous enough to be won and large enough to matter.
A game whose top prize is gone can still be the best buy on the shelf. A game with every top prize intact can be the worst, if the middle has been stripped out.
The third thing: what the table does not tell you
It does not say how many tickets are left. Almost no state publishes that. Without it you cannot convert the table into current odds or a payout percentage — you can only see which direction things have moved.
The number of remaining tickets has to be estimated, by comparing claimed prizes against their printed odds. That estimate is the weak point in every current-odds calculation anywhere, ours included, and it gets less reliable as a game nears the end of its run. We describe exactly how we do it, and where it breaks, on the methodology page.
It does not say where the tickets are. Prizes are distributed across a whole state. A game can be rich on paper and sold out in your county.
It does not say when the counts were updated. Some states refresh daily, some weekly, some irregularly. A table that looks unchanged may simply not have been refreshed. We record the capture date on every page for that reason, and show a notice rather than stale numbers if a refresh fails.
Doing it without arithmetic
All of the above is what our per-game pages already compute: full prize matrix, percentage remaining against percentage of tickets sold, current odds against printed odds, and payout. Pick any game from a state hub — Florida, Texas, Massachusetts — or go straight to a state’s remaining-prizes ranking to see the tables sorted.
The arithmetic is worth understanding anyway. It is the part of the lottery that is not a matter of opinion.
Other guides
- Making a Scratch-Off Budget Last — If you are going to spend $20 on scratch-offs, the arithmetic of how you spend it is not neutral. Here is what the numbers say about price tiers, splitting, and chasing.
- Claiming a Scratch-Off Prize, and the Tax That Comes With It — Where to claim by prize size, what deadlines apply, what gets withheld, and what you still owe afterwards. General information, not tax advice.
- How Scratch-Off Odds Change After a Game Goes on Sale — The odds printed on a scratch-off ticket are fixed for the life of the game. The odds you actually face are not. This explains the difference and how to measure it.
- New Game or Old Game: Which Scratch-Off Is the Better Buy? — New games have every prize intact and no information. Old games have fewer prizes and a full history. Neither is automatically better, and the reason is worth understanding.
- Why Payout Percentage Beats Overall Odds — Overall odds tell you how often you win something. Payout percentage tells you how much comes back. They frequently disagree, and one of them is the better guide.