Should you buy another $50 scratch-off after losing?
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Should you buy another $50 scratch-off after losing? The math says no as the ticket you just scratched has no effect on the next one.
According to our database, there are 80 $50 scratch-off games on sale in the US. The median $50 ticket has odds of one in 3.38, so about 70% of all $50 tickets lose outright or 7 out of 10 are losers. According to the prize tables the lotteries publish, that rate is fixed at printing. It does not fall after you lose on a ticket, and it does not rise after a win. The second ticket faces the same 70% chance it's gonna be a loser.
What a run of $50 tickets looks like
| Tickets bought | Chance all of them lose | Spent | Average amount lost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 70.4% | $50 | $10.20 |
| 2 | 49.6% | $100 | $20.40 |
| 3 | 34.9% | $150 | $30.60 |
| 5 | 17.3% | $250 | $51.00 |
| 10 | 3.0% | $500 | $102.00 |
Two losses in a row is a coin flip (from 7 out of 10 losing to 5 out of 10 losing). Three in a row happens to around one player in three.
The right-hand column is the part that answers the question. $50 games return 79.6% of sales as prizes, the highest of any price, so each ticket costs an average of $10.20 whether it wins or loses. Buying a second one to get the first $50 back does not touch the first loss. It adds a second expected loss of $10.20 on top.
Winning is not the same as getting your money back
When a $50 ticket does hit, it usually pays back just what you paid, $50, because the bottom prize on most $50 games is $50, $75, or $100. Across the 60 games where we can calculate it, the median chance of at least breaking even on one ticket is 29%. That is nearly the same as the chance of winning anything, so the money-back problem that affects four in ten wins at lower prices is smaller here.
Recovering a previous loss is a different bar. To get back to even after losing $50 and buying another, the second ticket has to pay back $100 or more. Texas's Lucky 7 Multiplier, the top-rated $50 game in the country right now, shows what that looks like.
| On one Lucky 7 Multiplier ticket | Chance |
|---|---|
| Wins anything | 30.7% |
| Pays $50, your money back | 11.2% |
| Pays $100 or more | 19.4% |
| Pays $150 or more | 10.7% |
| Pays $250 or more | 3.2% |
| Pays $2,500,000 | 1 in 1,140,000 |
So on the best $50 game we track, the chaser's ticket clears the bar about one time in five. On the median $50 game, with worse odds than this one, it is less.
If you were going to buy one anyway
None of this makes the $50 tier a bad buy relative to cheaper tickets. It is actually the opposite. A $5 game returns 69.3% on average, so $50 spent on ten of them loses $15.35 against losing $10.20 on one $50 ticket, and the pattern holds up and down the price list. The question is only whether the second $50 is a purchase you would make on its own, or a purchase you are making because of the first one.
If it is the first, pick by the game, not the roll. The $50 games with the most left in them as of September 5, 2026 are Lucky 7 Multiplier at 96 on our ValueScore™ scale, Ohio's Millionaire Blowout at 95.6 with 54 of its $1 million prizes still out, Indiana's $500 Grand at 91.8, North Carolina's 500X The Cash at 91.2, and Idaho's High Life at 91.2. The national rankings update daily.
If it is the second, the numbers above are the same numbers you already lost to once. The person ahead of you losing did not help you, and your own loss does not either.
How we did this. Game counts, overall odds, payout percentages, break-even probabilities, and prize tiers are from the state lotteries' published game data in our database as of September 5, 2026, covering the 80 active US $50 games, 70 of which have a payout figure and 60 a break-even figure. Streak probabilities use the median $50 game's overall odds of 1 in 3.38. Average loss per ticket is the ticket price times one minus the tier's average payout. Lucky 7 Multiplier figures are calculated from its published prize tiers; the chance of paying $100 or more is the chance of any prize minus the chance of the $50 tier.
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Frequently Asked Questions
If I just lost on a $50 scratch-off, is the next one more likely to win?
No. Each ticket is printed with its result already decided, and the prizes are spread through the whole run of the game, not lined up in your store’s roll. The median $50 game in the US wins something on one ticket in 3.38, so about 70% of tickets lose, and that figure is the same for the ticket after a loss as for the one before it.
What are the odds of losing twice in a row on $50 scratch-offs?
About 50%. With a 70.4% chance of losing on each ticket, two losses in a row come up 49.6% of the time, three in a row 34.9%, and five in a row 17.3%. Losing streaks on $50 tickets are ordinary, not a sign the game is due.
How much does a $50 scratch-off cost on average?
About $10.20 per ticket. US $50 games return an average of 79.6% of sales as prizes, so across many tickets the average player gets back $39.80 of each $50. That is the best rate of any price point, but it is still a loss of a fifth of what goes in, and buying a second ticket to recover the first adds a second $10.20 to the expected loss rather than removing the first one.
Phil Nageotte is a writer covering scratch-off odds, expected value, prize data, and more. He joined ScratchCheck in 2026 after years of tracking lottery payouts in spreadsheets of his own.
