Every year, Floridians spend about $350 each on scratch-off tickets. The state ranks 10th in the nation for per-capita spending on scratch-offs. There are currently 81 games from which to choose.

The object is to get more back than one spends on the tickets. Failing that, which of these 81 games offers the most money back in relation to the money spent? In other words, what's "the best return on investment"?

There's a website for that: https://scratchoff-odds.com/. More than 40 states sell scratch-off tickets, and the website tracks many of them, including all the larger states. And it tracks them in great detail, updating at least weekly, the exact number of winning tickets that remain in each prize level for each game.

Take Florida's 500X The Cash scratchoff. At $50 a stub, it's among state's two most expensive games. The site reports that there are "6,158,254 tickets remaining. At $50 per ticket, it would cost $307,912,700 to buy all remaining tickets. According to the latest reports from the Florida lottery website, there are $262,211,500 in remaining prizes."

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So the value of the prizes remaining is $45,701,200 less than the dollar cost of buying all the tickets. "That's an average of minus $7.42 per ticket," the website notes. And that means that for every $100 spent, players can expect to get back about $85 in prize money.

The website breaks down every game by every prize level for winning tickets remaining, and as noted previously, it does this on a nearly real-time basis. For instance: "An average of 58,164 tickets have been claimed each day between April 12 and April 19. The largest prize claimed in that time period was $50,000."

The website notes that the "number of remaining tickets at each prize level is provided by the state. The accuracy of this number is dependent on the accuracy of the numbers reported by the state." It is a treasure trove of statistics.

The 500X The Cash game has prize levels ranging from $25,000,000 (there is one grand prize ticket remaining), down to $100 winners (1,227,325 of those remain). With a rating of 85 (based on an expected average payback of $85 for every $100 spent), it is the "most generous" of Florida's 81 scratch-off games, according to the website's ratings.

The next four highest-rated games (and their cost; ratings) are:

• Gold Rush Limited ($20; 80)

• $1M a Year for LifeLife Spec ($50; 80)

• 100X The Cash ($10; 80)

• Florida 300X The Cash ($30; 79)

The five games with the lowest paybacks are:

• Loteria ($2; 55)

• Gold Rush Supreme ($2; 53)

• Monopoly Doubler ($1; 52)

• 20X The Cash ($2; 51)

• 50X The Cash ($5; 49)

The $1 game with the highest rate of return (65) currently is $500 a Week for Life. The best $2 game would be 2023 Cash Blast with a 71 rate of return. The best $5 game is The Price is Right with a return rate of 74. The best $10 game is 100X The Cash at 80. The best $20 game is Gold Rush Limited with a return rate of 80.

So, the higher the rating, the more players can expect to get back.

Sifting through all those figures to come up with the best rating doesn't mean the scratch-off money will start flowing the player's way. But it might mean you won't go broke quite as fast as before.

Lonnie Brown can be reached at LedgerDatabase@aol.com.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Website tracks the lottery games with the best payouts nationwide