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Do you have an iPhone (or SmartPhone) app?

We do not currently have any smartphone apps. Our site is optimized to work on iPhones as well as computers. We mail our reports in PDFs weekly every Friday.

Why don’t we have an app? We have been blocked from advertising our reports on Facebook and Google ads. The Apple App Store has similar Terms and Conditions to Google and Facebook, so we’ve decided not to invest in creating an app as we’re concerned about it being blocked because of apple terms & conditions.

RI Lottery: I have visited several retail sites, and find only a limited number of scratch games offered. Without visiting every outlet, is there a way to find some of these games??

Unfortunately, the Rhode Island lottery does not appear to have a search function on their website to find where games are still for sale or are being sold.

Our suggestion is to keep your report handy and just play the best games that you can find.
Because the RI lottery (and all other lotteries in the US) have been known to pull games early (See Video Secret #3) we cannot guarantee that you’ll be able to find the best games listed on our report.  We can only report and track what the RI Lottery publishes.
Remember, only play the best GREEN games you can find.

I subscribe to your New York State Lottery service and want to know what has recentlt changed with the NY games? The reports for 2/8/19 to 2/15/19 and for the 2/15/19 to 2/22/19 are the same, so what has changed in NY? Did I miss a recent change in the NY Lottery or was there a change in your weekly reports?

The NY Lottery Website only provides data for their top 2 prizes.
In order to get better data for NY, we have to submit a Freedom of Information Request to the NY Lottery.  We submit a request every month for a full liability report which shows ALL PRIZE Levels claimed.
Sometimes, the NY Lottery is VERY VERY SLOW to complete these requests.
When we receive the data back from these requests, we process it immediately.  Even though we submit a request every month, the NY Lottery isn’t always responsive to our requests in a timely manner. So there may not be a lot of movement until we get our next report from our Requests.
We do, however, gather the data they publish on their website on a daily basis, but with only the top 2 prizes being updated regularly, we need a top prize to be claimed for any change to really impact our reports in between Freedom Of Information Requests being updated.
So, by now, you’re wondering what value is our NY best games to play report?  Well, NY lottery is one of the ABSOLUTE WORST lotteries for tricking consumers with REPRINTED GAMES.  You can find out more about reprinted games here: https://www.scratchsmarter.com/scratch-off-secrets/secret2/
PLEASE watch the video and scroll down below the video to read about how we analyze and treat NY specifically in our reports.
I’d like to say that you should see a lot of movement in NY games on a weekly basis. Unfortunately, until NY State publishes more data on their website on a daily basis, we’re at their mercy for when they provide us our Freedom of Information Requests.  As soon as they give us the data, we turn it around and provide it to you.
Is this as good as other states?  No.  Is it better than any other analysis out there for NY Lottery games?  We can state with 100% confidence – YES it is!

Hi I enjoy your product and play TN and VA lotteries. The games ranked in our weekly report- are “top prizes remaining” basically the prizes they list on the website? Those smaller $10-$100 winners arent factored in as they are unknown, correct? Thanks for your time!

For VA, we pull and factor in ALL Prize levels, so our SmartFactor algorithm is 100% accurate, as VA publishes all Prizes unclaimed on a daily basis on each games webpage.  For example:
Having all prizes remaining for all prize levels allows us to fully calculate the SmartFactor rating.  Also, the EST % of tickets sold is highly accurate (again because of all of this data published).
For TN, where they only publish prizes for the top 3 prize levels, our SmartFactor rating still works, but the Est % of tickets sold has a lower degree of accuracy.  In this case, our SmartFactor algorithm still works, but we have lower confidence in the Est % tickets sold.  Over the life of the game, I would say it’s approx 95% accurate.  For VA, I would put our Est % of tickets sold at 99.99% accurate.
To put it simply:  States that publish all prizes remaining for all prize levels = HIGHEST degree of accuracy for Est % of tickets sold.  The fewer prize levels they report on, the less accurate we can be.  We don’t publish a SmartFactor for states that publish less than 3 prize levels.  For most of those states (like NY, MA & FL), we file Freedom of Information requests to get that detail.   We’ve requested that level of detail from TN, but hey have flat out refused to provide it.

I was told by a retailer that a scratcher will be retired even if top prizes are still available. In particular, weekly grand has been retired when your website says 3 of 4 top prizes still available. True?

Yes, this is absolutely true!  Check out our video Secret #3 for more details!

SECRET #3

(you will have to be logged in to see our video secrets)

There’s no report attachments in your emails?!?

Our team subscribes to our own email distribution lists thru several email addresses to ensure our attachments in the emails are going out.

Different email service providers have considerably different rules. If you’re not receiving the report attachments for your subscriptions, please contact your email service provider to ask them why you’re not receiving our attachments.
If you’re not receiving our emails at all, please check your junk mail folder AND add BestGames@ScratchSmarter.com to your address book and mark this address as “SAFE” with your email provider to make sure the reports you’re paying for get into your INBOX.

We cannot guarantee delivery of our reports through email because we can only send the reports. Your email service provider is responsble for delivering emails that you subscibed to into your INBOX.

This is why we have the MEMBERS AREA where you can bookmark your states reports page and come back to it everyweek. Reports are updated there every Friday by 12 noon EST.

What are considered top prizes in SC scratch off lottery tickets

ScratchSmarter considers the top 3 prize levels for every game a ‘top prize’ when calculating our SmartFactor for SC, and for all states.  If we can’t get the top 3 prize levels from the website, we submit Freedom of information requests to get all game level details.

South Carolina publishes all prize levels and all prizes remaining for all prize levels for all games.

When looking at the prizes remaining lottery page, does that mean those winning tickets have already been distributed to retailers and are ready to be won? Or, is it a listing of winning tickets that can be won either now or eventually and may or may not be available to win immediately? This is a PA question.

The prizes remaining total simply means these are prizes that haven’t been claimed.  It could mean:
1) the winning tickets are at a retailer available for sale
2) the ticket is in the lottery warehouse, waiting to be sent out to a retailer, or
3) tickets are still in the warehouse, but the lottery has ‘ended’ the game and won’t distribute any more of this game
4) someone has the winning ticket and is sitting on it before the claim it.  (this is highly unusual as most people want their big $$ immediately)
5) HIGHLY unlikely, someone won but didn’t realize it and threw the big winner away.
It almost always means #1 or #2 or #3 above.  Read more about #3 here:
https://www.scratchsmarter.com/info/buyer-beware-lotterys-dirty-trick/
and here:
https://www.scratchsmarter.com/info/cant-find-top-game/

Do we consider 2nd chance drawings in our rankings?

We do not consider the ‘2nd chance drawing’ option for any game when analyzing games.   We do, however, consider the top 3 prize levels when calculating our algorithm.  So, even if there is a small number of the very top prize left, there is probably a disproportionate number of 2nd and 3rd level top prizes still available that would make a particular game rank highly in any given week.