Are these pull tabs played for real money?

No. The table uses play chips that have no value, cannot be bought, and cannot be cashed out or exchanged for anything. If you run out, you are handed another stack for free. There is no account and nothing to download.

What is the return on a pull-tab ticket?

This deal prints 75%: its 4,000 tickets sell for 20,000 chips and pay back 15,000, so the deal keeps 5,000 chips, or 25%. From a full box that is 1.25 chips of every 5-chip ticket on average. Casino table games keep a few percent or less of each bet, which makes a pull tab one of the more expensive ways to gamble for every chip put in.

Does it matter how many tickets are left in the box?

Yes, and it is the one thing about a pull tab that changes. The printed return describes the whole deal. The tickets still in the box return whatever the prizes still in it add up to, divided by the tickets left. A top prize claimed early leaves the rest of the box poorer: with both gone and nothing else sold, the return falls from 75% to 65.03%. A long run of losing tickets does the opposite. The price never changes, and over the whole deal the box keeps exactly 25% whatever order the tickets come out in.

Why do so many losing windows show two of a kind?

Because of arithmetic, not design. With 6 symbols and 3 places, 42.86% of the rows that do not win show a pair of something. About 7.14% of losing windows show two of the top symbol, the same share as for every other symbol. Two of a kind is not close to three: the ticket was a losing ticket before it left the box.

Free Pull Tabs

Tickets from one finite box, bought with chips that are worth nothing, with every prize still in the box counted beside it.

Play chips

1,000

No real money, no prizes, nothing to buy.

Deal 14,000 of 4,000 left

Pull tab

No ticket yet

Left in this box · deal 1
Three of	Pays	Left
star	1,000	2 of 2
diamond	250	6 of 6
moon	100	20 of 20
ring	25	100 of 100
triangle	10	300 of 300
square	5	800 of 800
No prize	0	2,772 of 2,772
Return of what is left	75%

Buy a ticket from the box.

Session coach

Coach me as I play

Last round

Nothing played yet. After each of your tickets the coach says what the round cost and what decided it.

Decide the cost before you start

Gambling is entertainment with a price, like a concert ticket. The useful question is not how much you might win but how much the evening is allowed to cost. Pick that number first, and treat reaching it as the end of the session. You can set one below and the coach will hold you to it.

Next bet

5 chips at a 25% house edge: an expected cost of 1.3 chips.

This table is for practice and entertainment only. How to keep gambling safe

What a ticket costs

Ticket price: 5; −1.25 expected, from a full box
Printed return: 75%; The whole deal keeps 25%
Return of what is left in this box: 75%; 15,000 chips in prizes on 4,000 tickets
Chance of any prize now: 30.7%; 1 in 3.3
Chance of the top prize now: 0.05%; 1 in 2,000

The printed return is true of the whole deal and of a full box. After that, each ticket sold changes what the rest are worth: a prize claimed lowers the return of what is left, and a losing ticket sold raises it. The price of a ticket never moves. Set a pull-tab box beside the casino games

This session

Tickets bought: 0
Chips spent: 0
Net chips: 0
Expected at a 75% return: 0

The expected figure is 25% of the chips you have spent on finished tickets, the share a whole deal keeps. A short session can land well above or below it, because much of the return sits in prizes that rarely come up.

Built by Alexander Korsager · last updated October 3, 2026 · corrections

Printed return of a full box: 75%
Return of an otherwise full box once both 1,000-chip tickets are out: 65.03%
Tickets in one deal, sold until the box is empty: 4,000
Of a full box's tickets pay more than they cost: 10.7%

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A box you can count as it sells

A pull tab is a paper ticket with a few perforated windows. You pull the tabs open, and three matching symbols behind one window win that symbol's prize.

Like a scratch card, it has nothing to decide and nothing to get better at. Unlike most gambling, it is sold from a box you can stand next to: one printed deal of 4,000 tickets, with a fixed number of winners at each prize, sold until it is empty.

Two 5-chip tickets, every window open

A ticket that pays
1. Window 1: square, star, triangle
2. Window 2: square, square, square
3. Window 3: moon, star, diamond
Three squares in one window. It pays 5 chips, the price and no more.
0chips net
A ticket that does not
1. Window 1: ring, triangle, diamond
2. Window 2: triangle, ring, square
3. Window 3: triangle, triangle, square
No window holds three of a kind. It pays nothing.
−5chips net

One deal is 4,000 tickets. 1,228 carry a prize and the other 2,772 pay nothing, and each was that ticket before it left the box.

That box is what this table is about.

The deal here returns 75% of what it sells for and keeps 25%, which is in the range charitable pull-tab games commonly print. But that figure is only true of a full box. Every ticket sold changes what the rest are worth: once both 1,000-chip tickets are out, the tickets still in an otherwise full box return 65.03%, at the same price. The table counts the box as it sells and works out the return of what is left before every ticket.

What the tickets in the box return

A full box75%
The figure printed on the deal.
Both 1,000-chip tickets out65.03%
Nothing else sold, and the same box otherwise.

The prizes still in the box, divided by the tickets still in it. A ticket costs 5 chips either way.

02 / 03

Rules at this table

One deal: 4,000 tickets at 5 chips

Three of	Pays	In the deal
Star	1,000	2
Diamond	250	6
Moon	100	20
Ring	25	100
Triangle	10	300
Square	5	800
No three of a kind	0	2,772

Prizes are in chips. The count beside each is how many of the deal's tickets carry it.

Each time you buy

Tickets leave the box: yours first, then the hall's: 20
Of those are sold to other buyers, prizes and all: 19
Of your tickets empty one deal: 200
Tickets and every prize are back when a new deal opens: 4,000

A ticket costs 5 chips and has 3 windows, each hiding a row of 3 symbols.
Three matching symbols in one window win that symbol's prize. The symbols are star, diamond, moon, ring, triangle, square.
From a full box, 1,228 tickets pay something, a chance of 30.7% (1 in 3.3). 800 of those only hand the price back, so 10.7% of tickets pay more than they cost.
Tickets are sold without replacement. After each ticket you buy, 19 more are sold from the same box to other buyers, and any prizes on them leave with them.
When the box is empty, a new deal is opened with every ticket and prize back in it.
A ticket pays when its last window is opened. Open all opens the rest at once.
1 to 3
Open a window
Enter
Buy a ticket, or open the rest of one

FAQ

Are these pull tabs played for real money?: No. The table uses play chips that have no value, cannot be bought, and cannot be cashed out or exchanged for anything. If you run out, you are handed another stack for free. There is no account and nothing to download.
What is the return on a pull-tab ticket?: This deal prints 75%: its 4,000 tickets sell for 20,000 chips and pay back 15,000, so the deal keeps 5,000 chips, or 25%. From a full box that is 1.25 chips of every 5-chip ticket on average. Casino table games keep a few percent or less of each bet, which makes a pull tab one of the more expensive ways to gamble for every chip put in.
Does it matter how many tickets are left in the box?: Yes, and it is the one thing about a pull tab that changes. The printed return describes the whole deal. The tickets still in the box return whatever the prizes still in it add up to, divided by the tickets left. A top prize claimed early leaves the rest of the box poorer: with both gone and nothing else sold, the return falls from 75% to 65.03%. A long run of losing tickets does the opposite. The price never changes, and over the whole deal the box keeps exactly 25% whatever order the tickets come out in.
Why do so many losing windows show two of a kind?: Because of arithmetic, not design. With 6 symbols and 3 places, 42.86% of the rows that do not win show a pair of something. About 7.14% of losing windows show two of the top symbol, the same share as for every other symbol. Two of a kind is not close to three: the ticket was a losing ticket before it left the box.

How this game works

The box is one printed deal of 4,000 tickets: 2 pay 1,000, 6 pay 250, 20 pay 100, 100 pay 25, 300 pay 10, 800 pay 5, and the other 2,772 pay nothing. Buying a ticket takes one ticket out of the box in your browser, every ticket still in it equally likely, exactly as if the box had been shuffled and the top ticket handed over. That draw alone decides the prize. Your ticket is always drawn first, from the box as the table showed it, and the 19 tickets sold to other buyers are drawn the same way afterwards.

The 75% printed return is the prizes in the deal added up and divided by the 4,000 prices paid for them, with no sampling and no rounding. The top prize alone is 10% of every chip the deal takes in. The return of what is left is the same sum over the tickets still in the box: the prizes left, divided by the tickets left. The house edge comparison sets figures like these beside the casino games.

Only after the prize is fixed is the ticket laid out to match it. A winning ticket shows its prize symbol three times in exactly one window, and no other window holds three of a kind. A losing ticket has no window with three of a kind. There are 9,261,000 such losing tickets and each is equally likely: the layout is picked by a single uniform draw over all of them. No near misses are engineered. Pairs appear exactly as often as that uniform draw produces them, and no more often for a large prize than a small one.

While a ticket is being opened, the counter still shows the box it was drawn from, so the count cannot give the prize away. A deal is 200 of your tickets long, because 20 leave the box each time. The expected figure in the session panel is the share a whole deal keeps multiplied by the chips you have spent on finished tickets.

Limits

This is one invented deal, built to sit in the range real charitable pull tabs return. It is not a copy of any real game, and real deals differ from it and from each other in size, price and prize structure.
The other buyers are a fixed number of tickets after each of yours. A real hall sells in bursts, and a box can sit untouched or sell out in an evening.
This table shows the exact remainder of the box. A real hall shows far less: at most the large prizes still unclaimed, and often nothing, so the return of what is left cannot usually be worked out by a buyer.
The top prize is more common here than in most real deals, and real deals often hold back a share of the return in last-sale or seal prizes that are not modeled.
Play chips do not feel like money. A run of losing tickets is harder to stop after with a real stake.

This is a practice game for adults. It has no real-money play and links to none. A pull tab bought with money keeps a large share of the price whatever you do, and there is no way to play one well: of every 4,000 tickets in this deal, 3,572 return the price or less.

Gambling can cause serious harm. The National Problem Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738), or chat at ncpgambling.org/chat.

03 / 03

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