Earlier in August, we had a new crop of instant games: Casino Night, Lucky Times 10, Big Money Spectacular, and Crossword. Except maybe Casino Night, none of the other games are new. Let's look at their specs. Casino Night: $10 Card / 1 in 4 Wins / Top Prize: $1M (3 Prizes) Review: For the very high end player, this is a good card. With (3) $1M winners across 1.8M cards, you've got a 1 in 600K chance of hitting a million. Those are really good odds. Factor in the lesser $250,000 prizes, and you've got a respectable 1 in 300K chance to hit the good stuff. Lucky Times 10: $2 Card / 1 in 6 Wins / Top Prize $30,000 (6 Prizes) Review: This is another $2 card that tries to entice you with a higher prize at the expense of lower odds. For my money, I'd stick with Bingo Zone and play better odds for the lower prize amount ($10,000) Big Money Spectacular: $2 Card / 1 in 5 Wins / Top Prize $30,000 (11 Prizes) Review: This is a much better bet than playing Lucky Times 10, as you get better odds and more prizes.  I did notice they really upped their production ...

Check out this great $50 winner from our Bingo Zone purchase today. After we went penniless after the last batch of 5 we bought, we're happy that the odds came through on this side. In fact, we hit for a second $2 card right after the $50 winner.  This is only the second time we've hit four corners on any bingo game, the last of which was a smaller $20 winner.  The odds? Well, in a game of 10.8M cards, there are 18,000 $50 winners. That means there's a .0016% chance of hitting this payout (1.6 winners per every thousand cards!).

Take a look at this article over at CNN. A video feature is available too. A Virginia man is suing the state lottery for breach of contract because the instant game he purchased had already sold all of the top prizes. While his plight has garnered some support while reviewing the various comments about this story, we think it's fair to really examine the claims here in depth. Mr. Hoover says he was felt 'duped into buying these things'. I find that highly contentious; it's hard to blame a third-party for an adult's decision to buy a lottery ticket. If this guy has enough dough to retain a lawyer to sue the state lottery, I can't believe he's up in arms about losing on a scratch and win. Let's get to the merit of his point though. His lawyer says, "It's one thing to say it's a long shot to win the $75,000, but it's another thing to say you have no shot to win it". Again, another statement I'm not exactly comfortable with. In fact, the Virginia Lottery does display it's available prize listings, just like the NJ Lottery, on its website. If Mr. Hoover wanted to make an informed ...