Taiwan Lottery introduces 2 new scratch cards

Taipei, Oct. 17 (CNA) Taiwan Lottery Co. on Friday unveiled two new scratch card games that will offer a total of more than NT$1.01 billion (US$32.91 million) in prizes.

The company said in a statement Friday that the two games, Prosperity All the Way (一路發) and Joyous Bingo (歡樂賓果), feature more than 3.57 million prizes combined, with the former costing NT$200 per card and the latter NT$100.

Both cards were officially released Friday and will be available until they are sold out.

The NT$200 game features a play on the Mandarin word for the number "eight," which has itself served as a pun that has long been synonymous with the word "prosperity" in most Chinese-speaking cultures.

The number 16, meanwhile, sounds like "all the way" in Mandarin, and has also been paired with the number eight culturally for ages to become a set of prosperous numbers.

With the two sets of numbers as its primary theme, players have the opportunity to win prizes of NT$800, NT$1,600, NT$8,000, NT$16,000, NT$80,000, or NT$2 million.

Besides having 250,000 units of the basic NT$800 prize available, the game also has five of the top NT$2 million prize and an overall win rate of 30.25 percent, Taiwan Lottery said.

As its name suggests, the NT$100 scratch card is a variation of the traditional bingo game played by matching numbers on a ticket with the numbers presented in a 9 by 9 bingo square.

According to the company, players can make their NT$100 back by connecting one line, and win NT$200 by connecting two lines.

Players win NT$500, NT$1,000 and NT$2,000 for connecting three, four, and five lines, respectively, NT$10,000 for matching each of the bingo square's four corners, and a top prize of NT$300,000 for connecting eight lines.

On top of 240,000 prizes of more than NT$500 available, the game also has seven of the top NT$300,000 prizes and an overall win rate of 33 percent, the company said.