Cash Pop, explained
Nearly everything the lottery sells punishes you for spending more. Cash Pop is the exception: the $10 stake keeps a meaningfully larger share of your money than the $1 stake. Here's the mechanic, and the math.
How it works
Pick one number, 1–15. Pick a stake: $1, $2, $5 or $10. The terminal stamps your ticket with a random prize from that stake's range — you know what you're playing for before the drawing. If your number is the single number drawn (five drawings a day), you win the stamped prize. Your number hits 1 in 15, whatever you staked.
The finding: returns rise with the stake
Sum each stake's official table — every stamped prize times its published probability — and the expected return per $1 climbs as the stake grows:
Why? Fixed costs. Every ticket carries the same overhead — retailer commission, terminal time, the Lottery's cut of small transactions — so the cheap stakes are priced to cover it and the expensive stakes aren't taxed twice for it. The Lottery passes some of that back as richer prize ranges.
The $1 stake table
| Stamped prize | Odds |
|---|---|
| $250 | 1 in 15,000 |
| $100 | 1 in 6,000 |
| $50 | 1 in 2,700 |
| $25 | 1 in 750 |
| $20 | 1 in 270 |
| $15 | 1 in 180 |
| $10 | 1 in 105 |
| $7 | 1 in 75 |
| $5 | 1 in 31 |
Odds include the random prize assignment · source: official table, retrieved 2026-07-04
The $10 stake table
| Stamped prize | Odds |
|---|---|
| $2,500 | 1 in 15,000 |
| $1,000 | 1 in 4,125 |
| $500 | 1 in 1,500 |
| $250 | 1 in 375 |
| $200 | 1 in 165 |
| $150 | 1 in 150 |
| $100 | 1 in 120 |
| $70 | 1 in 105 |
| $50 | 1 in 31 |
Odds include the random prize assignment · source: official table, retrieved 2026-07-04
The honest caveat
"Better" tops out at ~67¢ back per $1 — a $10 Cash Pop play expects to lose about $3.30 five times a day if you let it. The right reading isn't "bet more," it's "if you're playing Cash Pop for fun anyway, one $10 play is a strictly better deal than ten $1 plays." Same spend, same 1-in-15 thrill, smaller expected loss.
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