Michael Wallace has always had a thing for numbers.
“I’ve always been fascinated with gambling games and games of chance.”
After moving from England to Canada, he became a fan of one particular contest.
“I’ve always looked forward to the Roll Up [To Win] season [at Tim Hortons],” he said.
Wallace, a biostatistician at the University of Waterloo, saw an opportunity when the campaign went digital in 2020.
“When you take games from a physical product to a digital environment, often that changes how the game actually has to be structured,” he explained.
Wallace did a deep dive into the rules and tested out one theory with 50 to 60 hot drinks.
He discovered the game is all about timing.
Wallace waited until the final day of the 2020 campaign and then rolled up 100 coffee cup rims.
“You want to try and play when other people aren’t,” he explained. “What I figured out was that the best time to play was about 3 a.m. in the morning Eastern time.”
He said that bet really paid off.
“I was able to win around 98% of the time.”
Wallace said Tim Hortons has changed the game design since 2020 but, in four subsequent years, his hypothesis allowed him to triple his winning percentage over and above the advertised 1-in-6 odds.
“The more coffee the better, both in life and in statistics,” Wallace said.
The 2025 contest includes both physical cups and a digital option.
Wallace, however, is confident he’ll be able to find a new winning formula.
When buying a hot drink, patrons get a coffee cup plus a chance to try their luck digitally. But, he explained, using with a reusable cup gets patrons two chances at playing the digital version of Roll Up To Win.
“If you want to just keep things simple, the physical cup gives you those 1-in-6 odds, but if you want to take life into your own hands... more digital rolls will give you that opportunity to maybe boost your odds a little bit higher,” Wallace said.
The popularity of the in-store game and the fact there are an equal amount of prizes to win through both the cups and the digital option, could also be an advantage.
“They’ve more than doubled the number of prizes, so you should have more chances to win,” Wallace said.
Aside from his love of games, probability and an extra large steeped tea with two milks, Wallace wants to bring his Roll Up To Win obsession into his university classroom.
“Every time when I teach, I have at least one lecture that’s all about Tim Hortons and Roll Up The Rim,” he said. “My students seem to enjoy it, even if I think they think I’m a little bit obsessed.”
Wallace should know if his theories are correct about three to four weeks into the contest.
