How to Play the California Lottery for Free

The corner doughnut shop sells pastries by day, but after hours transforms into a casino for locals in the sleepy beach town where I live. Workers gather, purchase lottery tickets and scratch away, hopeful for a chance to win millions. Financial advice columns always warn against “investing” in the lottery, and of all the ways to get a return on money, it’s the absolute worst.

But, while watching these lottery players shake their heads and trash their losing tickets, I started thinking. What if there were no downside to playing the lottery? What if you could play the lottery for free, with only a chance of winning? The California Lottery allows you to do exactly this.

Every Second Counts

About two years ago, the California Lottery started a new Internet-based program, called “CALottery Replay: Your 2nd Chance to Win.” The idea is to give lottery players a second chance to win from their losing scratcher tickets. For every scratcher game, there is a Replay prize at the end of the game equal to the top prize of the game. Top prizes vary by scratcher game, from $50 ranging into millions. Additionally, there are quarterly $1,000 prizes and special draws and promotions. All you need to play is a discarded lottery ticket: your own, or somebody else’s.

To begin playing, go to the California Lottery Replay website and sign up for a free account. On the left-hand menu, you’ll see a link to “Enter My Tickets.” Click on this link, and you’ll be prompted to enter the Ticket ID, and the ticket Entry Code.

The Ticket ID is easy to find: it’s always on the bottom of the ticket, either in the left or right corner in a white box. This is either six numbers, or six numbers followed by a dash and three more numbers. We’re only interested in the first six numbers. This is the Ticket ID that identifies the game in the lottery system, and this is what you enter in the “Ticket ID” box on the website.

The Entry Code is a little harder to find, for two reasons. The first reason is because you have to scratch the latex off the ticket to reveal the 13-digit number, and the second reason is because the location of the number varies by game. To find the location of the Entry Code, check the locator guide on the Replay website, and select the game from the dropdown menu.

Once you’ve entered your ticket, now you wait. Each ticket will be entered for a quarterly draw prize of $1,000, and once the game ends, is entered for the end-of-game top prize.

Instant gratification

Although this is largely a waiting game, there are times where the lottery pays off instantly. Occasionally, you’ll enter a ticket in the system to find the system rejects it. Most times this is because you’ve typed the Entry Code incorrectly, but sometimes it’s because someone has thrown away a winning lottery ticket. I’ve observed that for every 100-125 discarded lottery tickets, one is a winner. Frequently you’ll win another lottery ticket, or one of the lower prizes (sometimes multiplied into a nice prize) that someone overlooked.

With a little work, you could potentially be the California Lottery’s next millionaire without spending a dime.


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