Reference
Pull-tab glossary
Flare, deal, seal card, pickle jar. Every pull-tab and charitable-gaming term you will hear at the bar, defined in plain English.
- Break-openalso: Break-open ticket
- Another name for a pull tab, common in the Northeast and in Canada. You break the ticket open along its perforations to reveal the symbols.
- Charitable gamingalso: Lawful gambling
- Gambling that a licensed nonprofit runs to raise money for a cause. Pull tabs are one of its most common forms, alongside bingo, raffles, paddlewheels, and tipboards. See our state legality guides for who can run it near you.
- Dealalso: Box, game
- A complete, self-contained pull-tab game: a fixed number of tickets with a fixed, predetermined set of winners printed in. When people say a jar is âa fresh deal,â they mean no tickets have been sold yet. The deal is the unit that gives pull tabs their knowable odds.
- Electronic pull tabalso: E-tab
- A digital version of a paper deal, played on a tablet. It draws from a predetermined, finite set of winning and losing tickets, so the math matches paper. It is not a slot machine, which generates a fresh random result on every play.
- Flare
- The printed card or sign posted with a deal. It lists the ticket price, the number of tickets, and every prize level with the exact count of winners. The flare is where the odds live, and reading it is the single smartest thing a player can do. Feed those numbers into the odds calculator.
- House edge
- The average share of each ticket's price a player can expect to lose over a full deal. It is the mirror of the payout percentage: a 75 percent payout is a 25 percent house edge. On pull tabs, that edge is what funds the charity.
- Jar ticketalso: Pickle jar
- The classic bar presentation: a clear jar full of loose pull tabs sitting on the counter. Same predetermined deal inside, just a different container. “Pickle jar” is the old nickname for that container.
- Last sale
- A deal feature that awards a bonus prize to whoever buys the final ticket in the box, or the last winner of a certain type. It nudges players to help a deal sell all the way out.
- Nevada ticket
- A regional nickname for a pull tab, especially in the Midwest and South. It has nothing to do with the state of Nevada or its casinos.
- Payout percentagealso: Return to player
- The share of a deal's total sales that goes back to players as prizes. Add up every prize, divide by total sales at full sell-out. Most pull-tab deals pay 60 to 80 percent. Calculate any deal's payout with the odds calculator.
- Pull tabalso: Rip tab, tab
- A small multi-ply paper ticket with perforated tabs you peel open to reveal hidden symbols. Match a winning combination on the flare and you collect a fixed cash prize. The result is printed at the factory, not generated when you open it. Full rundown: how pull tabs work.
- Seal card
- A pull-tab game where certain tickets qualify for a bigger prize hidden under a sealed spot on a master card, revealed only after enough tickets sell. It stretches the suspense and lets a cheap ticket hang a larger top prize.
- Tipboard
- A poster-style board of sealed tickets or numbers players buy for a chance at posted prizes, often tied to a sports outcome or a sealed winning number. A cousin of the pull tab in charitable gaming.
- Winner-take-all
- A deal or game structured so a single large prize is awarded, rather than many small ones spread across the tickets.