Scratch cards are those famous, instant-lottery tickets that are, basically, simple cardboard cards that cost a pound a piece and the winning or losing numbers are hidden behind this strange silver substance (usually latex or modified ink) that you scratch away to see if lady luck is on your side. They’re made and endorsed by the National Lottery and have been a staple of British life for decades.

The question, though, is are they worth playing? Can you actually win big sums on any of these cheap scratch cards?

The answer, very simply, is yes, you certainly can. 

Like the main lottery, they offer cash prizes in the hundreds of thousands, even millions. Like the lottery, though, the chances of actually winning these sorts of gigantic cash prizes are astronomically small. Like, statistically, you would have to spend millions on scratch cards to earn one million. 

As odds go, they aren’t great. It’s very possible to win smaller cash prizes on most scratch cards, including most 1-pound cards, but the jackpot of millions is close to impossible. That doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to play and it doesn’t mean that they aren’t worth it either – just as long as your expectations are tempered by reality and you don’t spend more than a few quid on scratch cards at a time.

Most importantly, just because the odds are badly stacked against you and every time you buy a scratch card of any amount you should go in expecting that you will most likely make no money on it, doesn’t mean that you won’t still hit the jackpot and win the full maximum amount. Regardless of the actual odds against them, people do win the lottery all the time so there’s no reason why you can’t hit it big on a 1-pound scratch card. Someone has to win, right? No reason it can’t be you.