Smart Score Called the 100Xtra Top Prize: 14 Days of Rank Receipts

On May 28, 2026, the New York Lottery confirmed that one of the four remaining $250,000-a-year-for-20-years top prizes on the $20 game 100Xtra (1681) had been claimed. The top-prize counter dropped from 4 to 3.

That single claim is one of the rarest events on the entire NY scratch-off board: roughly 1-in-5.5-million per ticket on a game with millions still in circulation. Most ranking systems treat events like this as pure noise.

Ours did not. 100Xtra sat in our top 7 every single day for the two weeks leading into the claim, and was the #1-ranked NY scratch-off on 8 of the 13 days we have snapshots for. This post is the receipt.

The game: 100Xtra (1681)

100Xtra is a $20 NY scratch-off built around a 100× multiplier mechanic. The headline tier is paid as $250,000 a year for 20 years (a $5,000,000 prize value), with 4 winners originally printed. Heading into May 28, the game had:

• Roughly 36% of its tickets sold (still in the meaty middle of its lifecycle)
• 4 top-prize tickets remaining at the start of the window, dropping to 3 after today's claim
• Strong remaining counts on the $10,000 (5), $5,000 (8), and $2,000 (12) tiers
• A healthy 3,770 of the original 5,875 $500 tickets still in play

That mid-tier survival pattern is the kind of profile Smart Score tends to surface: the printed game still has more EV inside it than the brochure odds suggest, because the most valuable tiers are depleting slower than the overall ticket pool.

The receipt: 100Xtra's daily rank for the two weeks before the claim

Each row below is exactly what we published on the rankings page on that calendar day, with no edits or hindsight applied.

That is #1 on 8 of 13 published days, top-3 on 10 of 13, and top-7 every single day in the two-week window leading into the top-prize claim. The drop from #1 to #19 today is the model correctly re-weighting after the claim — one fewer top prize plus a small uptick in tickets sold both pull the score lower.

Why did the model favor 100Xtra?

Smart Score is not one number. It is a tier-aware machine learning model that combines a panel of factors and recalibrates them within the relevant ticket price tier (here, the $20 tier). On 100Xtra specifically, the signals that drove a sustained #1 score were:

• Top-prize density vs. field. Holding 4 (later 3) live $5M-value top prizes on a game with healthy remaining ticket count made 100Xtra one of the highest remaining top-prize-density games on the $20 board. Our top_prize_density_in_field and topprize_x_density factors both flagged it.
• Top-prize hazard. The hypergeometric extinction model kept assigning meaningful 30-day claim probability to 100Xtra's top tier despite the headline 1-in-millions odds, because $20 sales velocity and active store coverage were elevated.
• Mid-tier suppression. The $10K, $5K, and $2K tiers were depleting more slowly than the overall ticket pool — the “value-survival” gap the model is specifically trained to detect.
• Pull risk. A composite of how quickly the NY Lottery has historically pulled comparable $20 games from shelves once a top prize is claimed. High pull risk + high remaining EV is the classic “buy now” pattern.
• Pool burn efficiency and freshness. Still in the meaty middle of its lifecycle at ~36% sold, with the top tier intact, meant the runway for further +EV drift was wide open.

What this case study does NOT show

Honest accuracy reporting is what separates a real model from a slot machine with a marketing department, so:

How you can audit our predictions yourself

Every rank we publish is reproducible. You can see the live picks, the factors behind them, and our overall accuracy at any time:

• Live rankings — /rankings, updated daily
• Historical rankings calendar — click any past date on the rankings page to see exactly what we had ranked that day
• Top picks and factor breakdown — /strategy
• Model accuracy metrics — /methodology
• 100Xtra's live page — /game/1681

If we ever quietly stop publishing a rank because it would look bad, the gap will show up on the page. That is the entire point of publishing it daily.

What to take away as a player

1. Watch rank persistence, not single-day spikes. 100Xtra was top-7 for 13 days straight and #1 on 8 of them. A game that holds the top of the board for two weeks is a much stronger signal than a one-day blip.
2. Top-prize density inside the price tier matters more than the absolute jackpot. 100Xtra's headline isn't the biggest number on the $20 board, but its remaining top-prize count relative to remaining tickets was elite.
3. Re-check after a claim. When a top prize gets claimed, the model re-weights immediately. 100Xtra dropped from #1 to #19 in a single day. If you were buying because of the rank, the rank just changed.
4. Always play within your means. No model erases the house edge. Even the best-ranked $20 ticket still has a negative expected return per single ticket.

Related Articles

• Smart Score Called the $10,000 a Week for Life Top Prize
• Smart Score Called Pot of Gold Before the $500,000 Claim
• NY Scratch-Offs Running Out of Top Prizes (Hazard Model)
• Scratch-Off Expected Value Explained
• Best $20 Scratch-Offs in NY

Data sourced from the official New York Lottery prize reports at nylottery.ny.gov. All ranks and scores in this article are exactly as published on the day shown, queryable via our public /history/rankings and /history/game endpoints. For entertainment and informational purposes only. Please play responsibly.