There is something to this. I had to do some training years ago at Alberta Lottery in Canada. Scratch tickets are sold in blocks of $100 (100 x $1, 50 x $2, etc).
We were told that each pack contains at least one winning ticket (it might be $5 or it might be $100K).
Are you considering doing card counting (enter a shop, watch people buy and scratch cards, and start buying after a large streak of non-winning cards)?
Otherwise, I do not see what that information (if it is true) would give you.
I was working at a place that sold these tickets. If you could keep track of each pack that was sold, you could get to the point where you knew your purchase would be a winner.
Obviously not something a person who didn't have the ability to monitor the purchases could do.
i believe the point is that the there is a pattern to the distribution. we can only safely assume the pattern is on a micro level, but it would suggest there are larger patterns at play.
for instance, is it possible to ship 5 rolls with million dollar winnings to the same store in a week? maybe the answer is yes, but i imagine there's a reason to prevent this. in case it's not clear i am just guessing. i don't really know what i'm talking about.
"but it would suggest there are larger patterns at play."
That, I do not see. If there are some guarantees as to having guaranteed prices per roll, one can see the lottery as the sum of small, per-roll lotteries, possibly combined with a larger one to distribute the truly large prices. There is no reason to assume that those per-roll lotteries will be correlated in some way.
that would definitely be an effective way to exploit the weakness, and if the value of your time is low enough, it would be profitable. A slightly more efficient way to exploit it would be to have the shop owner as a friend and have them tell you when a large non-winning streak has occurred.
We were told that each pack contains at least one winning ticket (it might be $5 or it might be $100K).
That's a definite weakness.