How to play
Gold Rush Scratch is a twelve-box card set in a prospector’s camp. Under each foil box is one of nine pictures. Seven of them are worth something; the rock and the old boot are just dirt in the pan.
- Pick a Ticket price of 10, 50 or 100 credits and press Buy ticket.
- Rub the boxes with a finger or the mouse to scratch them off. Tapping a box, or reaching it with the keyboard, opens it in one go, and Reveal all uncovers the whole card at once.
- When every box is open, the ticket is settled. Three of the same paying symbol wins that symbol’s prize, as a multiple of the ticket price. A card never holds more than one winning set.
The prize list runs along the bottom of the ticket, so you can check a symbol’s value while you scratch.
Prize table and odds
| Symbol | Prize | Chance per ticket | Roughly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold nugget | 1× | 21% | 1 in 5 |
| Gold pan | 2× | 8% | 1 in 12 |
| Pickaxe | 5× | 2.6% | 1 in 38 |
| Lantern | 10× | 1.2% | 1 in 83 |
| Mine cart | 25× | 0.4% | 1 in 250 |
| Gold bar | 100× | 0.08% | 1 in 1,250 |
| Mother lode | 1,000× | 0.01% | 1 in 10,000 |
| Rock, old boot | nothing | n/a | n/a |
Add the chances up and a ticket wins something 33.29% of the time, a bit better than one card in three. Most of those wins are small, though: 21 of the 33.29 points are the gold nugget, which only hands back the ticket price.
What makes this card different
This card has more rungs in its prize ladder than most. Seven paying symbols means there is a prize at 25× and another at 100× between the everyday lantern and the jackpot. The mother lode at 1,000× is also the biggest single prize among the symbol cards here. For comparison, Treasure Hunt uses the same twelve-box layout with six paying symbols and tops out at 500×.
Here’s how the 90% return is shared out across the tiers, in percent of the ticket price returned per ticket on average:
| Tier | Share of return |
|---|---|
| 1× nugget | 21 |
| 2× pan | 16 |
| 5× pickaxe | 13 |
| 10× lantern | 12 |
| 25× mine cart | 10 |
| 100× gold bar | 8 |
| 1,000× mother lode | 10 |
The total is exactly 90. A tenth of every ticket’s value sits in a prize that turns up once in 10,000 cards, which is why long runs feel thinner than the 90% figure suggests.
How the card is made
The result is drawn the moment you pay. If the ticket is a winner, the winning symbol goes on the card exactly three times. Every other picture can appear at most twice, rocks and boots included, and the twelve boxes are then shuffled.
That has a visible side effect: almost every card is full of pairs. A losing ticket typically shows around four symbols twice. Two gold bars and two mother lodes on the same card is just how the layout is filled. It isn’t a near miss in any real sense, because a third one was never going to be there.
Strategy
There’s nothing to optimise in the scratching itself. The order you open boxes in, how fast you go, and whether you use Reveal all have no effect at all; the ticket was settled when you bought it.
The decisions that matter happen before you buy:
- Ticket price changes the size of the prizes, not the odds. A 100-credit card pays 100,000 for the mother lode with the same 1-in-10,000 chance as a 10-credit card.
- Smaller tickets stretch a balance further. With a 90% return every price loses about the same share over time, so a 10-credit card simply gives you more cards for the same credits.
- Expect dry spells. Two cards in three pay nothing, and runs of five or six blanks in a row are normal.
If you enjoy Gold Rush Scratch, try Golden Hands Baccarat or Greyhound Race next.
