How to play
This is the noughts-and-crosses scratch card you may remember from a newsagent’s counter, played with virtual credits. The ticket has two parts under its silver coating: a 3×3 grid where every box hides an X or an O, and a separate Prize box with an amount in it.
- Choose a ticket price. The price buttons offer 10, 50 and 100 credits. Every prize on the ticket scales with the price you pick.
- Tap Buy ticket. The price leaves your balance and a fresh card appears.
- Scratch. Drag a finger or the mouse across the silver to rub it off, or simply tap a box to uncover it in one go. Keyboard players can move to a box and open it the same way. Reveal all uncovers whatever is still hidden.
- Once everything is showing, the ticket is settled. If three X’s line up anywhere on the grid, you win the amount in the Prize box.
A line can be any of the eight a tic-tac-toe player knows: three rows, three columns and the two diagonals. Lines of O’s mean nothing.
What a ticket can show
- A winning ticket has exactly one line of three X’s, never two, so there’s no question of being paid twice.
- A losing ticket has no line of X’s at all. Its Prize box still shows an amount, picked at random from the possible prizes. It’s there for the suspense; you don’t get it.
- Near misses happen naturally. Each box on the grid has a little under a one-in-two chance of being an X, so two X’s in a line with an O spoiling the third is a very common sight on a losing card.
Prizes and odds
Prizes are multiples of the ticket price. These are the exact chances for any single ticket, taken from the game’s prize table:
| Prize | Chance per ticket | On a 50 ticket |
|---|---|---|
| ×1 (money back) | 16.5% | 50 |
| ×2 | 9.0% | 100 |
| ×3 | 4.0% | 150 |
| ×5 | 2.5% | 250 |
| ×10 | 1.1% | 500 |
| ×20 | 0.5% | 1,000 |
| ×50 | 0.12% | 2,500 |
| ×200 | 0.02% | 10,000 |
Add the column up and 33.74% of tickets win something, about one in three. Half of those wins are just the ticket price coming back. The top prize of 200 times the price turns up once in every 5,000 tickets on average.
Weighting each prize by its chance gives a return of exactly 90%: for every 100 credits spent on tickets, 90 come back over the long run. The ticket price doesn’t change that. A 100 ticket has the same odds as a 10 ticket, with every prize ten times bigger.
Strategy
Here’s the honest part. The outcome of a ticket is fixed the moment you buy it: the game draws the prize first, then lays out X’s and O’s to match. Nothing you do after that can change it.
- Scratching order doesn’t matter. Prize box first, grid first, corner by corner: the ticket is already decided. Choose the order that’s most fun for you.
- Reveal all saves time if you’re only interested in the result.
- Pick the price for the session you want. Ten-credit tickets let a 1,000 balance last for a long run of cards. A 100 ticket makes each win bigger but uses up your credits ten times faster, at the same 90% return.
- A losing streak isn’t a sign of a win coming. Each ticket is drawn independently. Ten losers in a row says nothing about the eleventh.
- Compare with the table games. A 10% edge is steep next to a single-zero roulette bet, which is the price of the instant result.
If you like this format, Lucky Match asks for three matching amounts, and Lucky Numbers has you compare your numbers with the winning ones. Both have the same 90% return.
If you enjoy Scratch Tic-Tac-Toe, try Seven and a Half or Seven Card Stud next.
