Many casinos, bingo halls, and card rooms in Washington sell pull
tabs. I've never seen them mentioned, let alone evaluated, in any of
the gambling books I've read. But I thought I'd take a look anyway.
It turns out to be a game that can favor the player if they have
sufficient skill in evaluating the game. But there is no way to
win "big" because the denominations of play is small, usually 50
cents or less per pull tab.
One game, for example, costs 50 cents per tab, and there were 6000
tabs in a new batch. So the casino gross is $3000. There are 332
winning tabs: 4@$300, 4@$75, 4@$20, 8@$3, 12@$2, and 300@$1. So the
winners will earn $1928 and the casino profit is $1072. The player
return is only 65% and the casino return about 35%.
When a winning tab is sold this is posted to the prize list posted on
the box with the tabs. Its easy to tell how many prizes remain, and
which ones they are. The "trick" is knowing how to estimate the
number of tabs still unsold. If there are less than 300 left, and
a $300 prize is still unclaimed, it obviously would be worthwhile to
buy all of the remaining tabs.
If I were a pull tab "regular" I would try to develop a skill at
estimating the tabs in each pile, and compare that to the prizes
still not won. With this skill, it may be possible to identify a
situation that actually favors the player.