cheat scratch cards
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How cool it would be if you could cheat scratch cards. Millions of people play them each and every day. And all in the hope of finding that elusive jackpot that’ll turn their lives upside down….but in a good way. When you purchase a scratch card, all the numbers/letters are hidden under foil and there’s absolutely no means of knowing what lies under each circle of foil. It needs to be scratched away with a coin or your fingernail to reveal itself. But what if there existed a means to cheat this security feature?

Introduction: Cheat Scratch Cards With The Singleton Method

In 2003 a Canadian man named Mohan Srivastava was in his office waiting for some computer files to download. To pass the time, he started to play with some scratch cards that were lying around the office. The first one was for nothing. But the second gave him a small prize. This got him thinking about how exactly are their cards produced. Being that he was a geological statistician, he already had the mental capacity to look at this question. He was able to prove that scratch cards are not random jackpot games, and he devised a means of selection called the Singleton method.

The Singleton Method Is Born

Armed with the knowledge that these tickets were massed produced, he figured that they couldn’t be purely random, as the printer would need to be able to control the printing of the winning numbers. Knowing that the tickets were mass-produced, he figured that they couldn’t be totally random since the manufacturers needed to control the numbers printed on the winning tickets. Srivastava bought a number of scratch cards and quickly found a flaw in their manufacture. Armed with this information, he was able to devise a plan and method to cheat the system. Now if you’re expecting some MIT level mathematics here, then we’re sorry to disappoint you.

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Cheat Scratch Cards: Single Numbers Please

All you had to do was to look at the visible numbers shown on the card before you made the purchase. You didn’t even need to scratch off anything. Just by looking at the numbers printed on the side of the ticket, would give you enough information to be correct 90% of the time. Srivastava found that if one of the side printed numbers appeared only once, then it would be a certainty that it would also appear under the skin of latex that needed to be removed. So, essentially, he was looking for what are called “singletons”.

cheat scratch cards
Everyone loves scratch cards, even Indiana Jones – Image source: Flickr

Cheat Scratch Cards: Tic-tac-toe Cheat Method Explained

It seems almost too simple to be true. But it was that easy. Find yourself a card with some singletons on it. Better still if you had three in a row, as this almost always guaranteed a prize. Using this method, Srivastava found he had a 90% chance of securing a payout.

The Manufacturers Haven’t Done Much

Being the nice guy he was, Srivastava took his findings to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. This caused the particular game of Tic-Tak-Toe to be pulled from all outlets. They would later state that this fault was caused by an error in the actual printing. In reality, they couldn’t really say anything else, as the “error” was hard-wired into the production method of many types of scratch cards. So, yeah, they were economic with the truth.

If you look into it, you’ll find that you can still use this trick to cheat scratch cards being offered in both Canada and the United States. This is because there are only a handful of companies that produce and print these cards. And this bad practice during the printing process was being continued through the continent. To be sure of this, Srivastava asked friends and relatives from all over the US to send him scratch cards. And sure enough, using his singleton’s method, he could crack virtually all of them. So, in spite of him pointing out this glaring fault, nothing was being done to rectify the situation. So, why not?

It’s Part Of The Manufacturing Process

cheat scratch cards
Scretch cards are popular all around the world – Image source: Flickr

The answer is because the manufacturers can’t do anything about it. The games companies want the buying public to think that these scratch cards are nothing more than a game of chance. But, due to their production methods, it would be impossible to make them totally random. The printing companies were using an algorithm to ensure that the correct number of winning cards are produced. Otherwise, they would have no idea as to the number of winning tickets that might be in circulation. And it’s these algorithms that give the game away, so to speak.

Cheat Scratch Cards: Using The Singleton Method For Yourself

We have a feeling that this is a flaw that cannot be fixed. The cards are printed in a mass production method, so there needs to be this algorithm controlling the whole process. And that’s why we feel, that they have simply chosen to ignore this fault, in the hope that customers are ignorant of it. You can try this method yourself. First off, we should state that it doesn’t work on all scratch cards. Only those called “extended cards”, where the idea is that you scratch off numbers and match them with numbers already showing on the side panel of the ticket. This is because, in order to cheat scratch cards, seeing the actual numbers before you start scratching is of paramount importance.

Cheat Scratch Cards: Conclusion

When you go to buy your scratch cards, the numbers, though printed on the front, might not be visible to you due to the way the seller stacks them. Also, keep in mind that there’s no guarantee that you be hitting a huge jackpot. In fact, you never know just how much you’ll be winning. Put it this way, Srivastava didn’t think it was a worthwhile pursuit, as the prizes were not worth the effort needed to gain them. On the other hand, we guess that you could scale this method to cheat scratch cards to make it more worthy of your time and may increase your jackpot winning chances.

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