How to play
Lucky Numbers is the “match your number” style of scratch card. The top panel hides two winning numbers. Below it are eight boxes, your numbers, and each box has its own prize printed under the number. Every number on the card is between 1 and 30.
- Choose a ticket price (10, 50 or 100) and press Buy ticket. The price comes off your credits straight away.
- Scratch. Drag a finger or the mouse across the silver coating, tap a box to clear it in one go, or use the keyboard to move between boxes and open them. Reveal all uncovers the whole card at once.
- Compare. If one of your eight numbers is the same as one of the two winning numbers, you win the prize printed under that number. When everything is uncovered, the win is paid and you can buy the next card.
Only one of your numbers can ever match. The card is built so that you never get two matches, which means the prize under the matching box is the whole win.
How a ticket is made
This is worth knowing because it explains what you see. When you buy a card, the game first decides the prize (or no prize) from the table below. Then it lays out a card to fit:
- two winning numbers are drawn from 1–30;
- your eight numbers are drawn from the other 28, so on a losing card none of them can match;
- on a winning card, one of your eight boxes is swapped for a winning number, with the decided prize printed under it;
- every other box gets a prize label chosen at random from the eight possible amounts.
That last point is why you so often see a 1,000× printed on a losing card. Each non-matching box has a one-in-eight chance of showing it, so roughly two losing cards in three carry at least one 1,000× label somewhere. It pays only when the number above it matches.
Prizes
Amounts are multiples of the ticket price, and the chances are per ticket:
| Prize under the match | Chance |
|---|---|
| 1× (ticket back) | 15% |
| 2× | 8% |
| 3× | 4% |
| 5× | 3% |
| 10× | 1.2% |
| 25× | 0.38% |
| 50× | 0.17% |
| 1,000× | 1 in 50,000 |
| no match | 68.25% |
Add the rows and a card wins something 31.75% of the time, just under one in three. Take out the 1× refunds, though, and only about one card in six (16.75%) actually ends in profit.
The return
Each prize times its chance comes to exactly 90% of the ticket price. Close to two-thirds of that comes from the small prizes up to 5×; the 1,000× top prize adds only 2 points, because it’s so rare. On a long run of 10-credit cards you’d lose about one credit per card on average.
Strategy
Nothing you do after buying changes the card. It has already been decided and laid out; scratching only reveals it. The order you scratch in, how fast you scratch and whether you press Reveal all make no difference.
That leaves two real choices.
Price. It changes the size of the swings, not the 90% return. A 100-credit card wins the same way a 10-credit card does, ten times bigger in both directions.
Pace. Reveal all is quicker, and the card is decided either way. If you enjoy the build-up, scratch the winning numbers first; then every box you open is a small yes-or-no moment instead of a pile of numbers to compare at the end.
For a card where you hunt for three equal amounts instead of a matching number, try Lucky Match. Gold Rush plays the same three-of-a-kind idea with picture symbols.
If you enjoy Lucky Numbers, try Lucky Roll Baccarat or Lucky Seven Card next.
