NY Lottery Second Chance Drawing & How to Play

Whether you play scratch off tickets, or draw games like Mega Millions, Powerball, or the New York Lotto, you should always makes sure to enter losing tickets into the NY Lottery’s second chance drawings.

Why?

Because it’s free to play, it’s relatively easy to enter, and most importantly: that losing ticket can turn into thousands of dollars.

Despite requiring only a few seconds to scan a losing ticket on an easily-downloadable phone app, a lot of people either don’t know about it, don’t know how to play, or are simply too lazy. All of which means your chances of winning a second chance prize are often better than winning the original prize!

And as for those prizes? They range from a free scratch off ticket, to a $50 Home Depot gift card, to $100,000 cash!

Now to be fair, the NYLottery App doesn’t exactly get raving reviews, with players saying it’s often buggy, however that just means fewer people will play. This means less competition for prizes, which is great news for those of us willing to deal with the hassle.

How to Enter the New York second chance lottery

There are 3 steps to take to enter your losing NY Lottery draw ticket into a second-chance opportunity.

1) Register a NY Lottery account

First off, to play NY Lottery Second Chance games, you’ll need to register for an account with the NY Lottery (if you haven’t already done so). You can do this on a desktop or on your phone.

Registration is very quick, as you’ll just provide your name, address, phone number, email, and last four digits of your Social Security number. Once you are verified through a confirmation text or email code, you’re good to go.

2) Download the Collect ‘N win app

To play you’ll then have to download the New York Lottery’s Collect ‘N Win app from either the Apple App store or from Google Play.

3) Scan your ticket on the App

Once you have the Collect ‘N Win app downloaded, you’ll either use the camera function to scan the bar code on the ticket (the left blue button below), or type in the ticket’s 18 numerical code in manually (the blue button on the right below).

Draw Games Second Chance

The Collect N Win app is used for scanning losing draw game tickets, like Powerball, Numbers, Win4, etc., along with scratch off tickets.

Rules can change, but typically every type of draw game available is eligible for the Collect N Win second-chance drawing.

The NY Lottery draw games include Powerball, Mega Millions, New York Lotto, Numbers, Win4, Take5, Cash4Life, Quick Draw, and Pick10.

With most states, you’re done after scanning your draw ticket; but this being New York, it has to be complicated, right?

Once scanned, each 50 cents worth of losing tickets you scan gives you a random symbol on a 6 symbol card.

For example, say you buy a New York “PICK 10” ticket. Since that particular game costs one dollar, entering the losing ticket would get you two symbols. Once you acquire all six symbols on the card, you’ll have one entry into the second chance drawing.

NY Lottery Draw Games 2nd Chance Prizes

The number of prizes awarded and prize amounts will change, however it’s typical for there to be between 560 total second chance prizes awarded each month, broken down as follows:

The number and amount of prizes can fluctuate by the month. In the past, we’ve seen $100 gift cards awarded (like to Home Depot for example). In the past, they’ve also given away $100,000 as a 2nd chance prize.

Entry periods start at the first of the month, and end the last day of the month. The losing tickets you entered to get an entry for say, May, will only be included in the May second chance drawing. They won’t carry-over to June.

New York Lottery Scratch Off Tickets Second Chance

Previously you had to use a different app (the NYL Extended Play app) to enter scratchers into second chance drawings, but now everything is done under the Collect ‘N Win app.

There aren’t as many second chance prizes for scratch-off ticket losers, but recent giveaways included up to $100 Tango gift cards, a single $5,000 cash prize, and several $10,000 home theater packages.

(Related: Why you should play 2nd Chance Lottery Drawings).

What are your Chances of Winning a NY Lottery Second Chance Drawing?

That’s not easy to answer, as it all depends on how many people go through the effort to earn enough entries for each drawing.

Nevertheless, it’s easy to say that your chances of winning a big 2nd chance prize in the NYLottery are significantly greater than winning a big prize in the original game.

Information of 2nd chance drawing odds is not readily available, however an article in the respected lottery-industry magazine LaFluers.com gave us some ideal.

The article indicated that after the first six weeks following the launch of the former NY Lottery’s Extended Play app, 25% of tickets sold were scanned. In other words, three out of every four lottery players didn’t’ bother entering a second chance drawing, which is good news for those of us willing to take a few seconds for a chance at winning thousands.

More about the NYLottery’s 2nd Chance Promotions

• You can enter a maximum of ten non-winning tickets per day.

• Also, you have to be 18 years old or older to enter second chance drawings.

• You can go to the New York Lottery’s Official website here: NYLottery.NY.Gov

• As with the NYL Extended Play, the New York Lottery’s Player’s Club has been discontinued, and you won’t find the Player’s Club app on the Apple App Store nor Google Play.

• The New York lottery is one of the nation’s older state-run games, having begun with a raffle-type drawing in July of 1967. In that drawing, six $100,000 grand prizes were awarded – one going to a 20 year-old Syracuse University student.

• The Empire state’s first scratch off tickets were issued in September 1976.

• The NY Lottery claims it is “North America’s largest and most profitable Lottery.”

• Not 2nd chance related, but I found it interesting: One New York man has twice won $1 million prizes from the New York lottery.

According to a FoxNews.com story, the construction worker from New Babylon won a $1 million scratch off grand prize, then – four years later – won the $1 million “Win for Life” jackpot.

(By Steve Beauregard. Photos courtesy of the New York Lottery.)