Thanks to a Texas lawsuit, we have some interesting insight into prize distribution.
Below are some images from court documents filed as part of a $508 million lawsuit against G-Tech. Keep reading and you'll learn how this information can be exploited by players.
The first juicy bit comes from the third game parameter.
3) No consecutive string of non-winning tickets will be greater than <redacted> which is 2 times the overall odds for this game rounded to the nearest whole number.
It's simple to figure out what number was redacted. We know the overall odds for the game and can simply multiply that by 2 and round to the nearest whole number and we know that there can be no more than 8 (2 * 3.77, rounded) non-winning tickets in a row.
This isn't easily exploitable for profit by the average player. You would need to sit around a lottery retailer all day and wait for people to buy tickets, hope they scratch them in front of you immediately, and wait to see 8 losers in a row. But for someone who works at a lottery retailer, this is a situation that might be seen on a regular basis.
One part of this that is exploitable is that if you plan on buying multiple tickets, you should buy them one at a time. If you get several losers in a row, your odds will be slightly better on the following tickets. If you get several winners in your first few tickets, you can stop right there.
7) No more than <redacted> winners of $25 to $50 per pack.
8) No more than <redacted> winner of $75 and higher per pack.
Here's another failed attempt at redaction that we can use to our advantage.
Unless there was a typo, the singular "winner" tells us that the number behind the redaction is "1". There is no more than 1 $75+ winner per pack.
Now, of course these game parameters are specific to the Texas scratchoff game Fun 5's. But there's no reason to think these rules aren't typical of all games. The only thing that should be different will be the numbers. If a $5 game parameter is that there is no more than a single $75+ winner per pack, then it's probably a safe assumption that for a $10 game there is no more than a single $150+ winner per pack.
The important takeaway is that if you get a nice winner from a pack of tickets, you should probably stop buying from that pack.