Online scratch cards proved to be a complete waste of time

Programmer and author of ‘The Geek Atlas’, John Graham-Cumming, has proven that online scratch cards are a complete waste of money and time.

With internet being the main source of entertainment these days, and gambling being how many people get their moments of fun, its no surprise that gambling has made its way online.

A main source of online betting is scratch card games that appear as a flash app. These games are legal, and look just like regular scratch cards, but with more fun to them. However it is a lot less likely that you will win.

As it is shown, all a user needs to do is log onto a site, choose a scratch card, and play the game. You either scratch off panels or doll a dice and move around a board etc. It all depends on the chosen card.

Of course everyone hopes to get a little money out of this experience a few times.

John Graham-Cumming however, has informed us all that the moment the card is selected, the system immediately decides if you win or lose, before you have even played the game. It’s hard coded into the system, there is no luck involved.

Graham-Cumming states,

“It’s not even like the regular lottery where the result is random. In the “Instant Win” games the outcome is entirely known the moment you click Buy and your interaction with the game makes no difference at all. As you interact with the game you are literally wasting your time (and money).

The great advantage of this scheme is that it makes the game very secure. It doesn’t matter what you do to hack the Flash applet or even modify that XML, the web site knows the correct outcome. When each game ends you end up going back to the same URL (there’s no need for the Flash game to tell the web site what you won).”

All in all, it’s a big rarity to win and even then, the system will only give you a small amount, which is most likely less then what you paid for the game in the first place.