I get asked this type of question quite often.

Surprisingly the answer depends on you.

The UK has various lottery games, from Hot Picks to Thunderball. All with different odds, all with different prize divisions and amounts. Some with very different methods of play. So it’s certainly confusing!

All lottery games balance the odds against size of the jackpot, i.e. bigger jackpot = harder to win. So the answer really depends on how big a prize you want to win.

Here’s Why…

Ignoring Hot Picks for just a moment.

Daily Play actually gives you the best odds of winning ANY prize (at 1 in 7.4), and the best odds of winning the top prize (1 in 888,030).

But of course that top prize is much smaller than the other games at just £30,000 – bigger jackpots are harder to win, right?

Hot Picks confuses this slightly too as you have to specifically choose which prize level you want to play for, Match 1, Match 2 etc. Most of the prizes are too small to bother (you may as well just play a slot machine!). But…

• Pick 4 odds are 1 in 14,126 for a £7,000 prize
• Pick 5 odds are 1 in 317,814 for a £130,000 prize

So both are actually easier to win the big prize than Daily Play. But remember with Hot Picks there are NO other prizes for matching less balls.

So while Pick 5 is nearly 3 times easier to win the big prize than Daily Play, and the prize is more than 4 times bigger – it’s Match all 5 or you get nothing at all.

So What Can You Do..?

All of which means – choose the game with the best odds, that offers a jackpot that’s big enough for YOU. Don’t simply go for the game with the biggest jackpot.

To help you figure out which game gives you the best chances of winning use my new lottery compare tool.

And, get in touch if you have any questions about the lottery.

In case you missed it, EuroMillions rolled over again last week.

Which makes the jackpot this Friday one of the biggest seen at a rather crazy €129 Million.

UK players are hoping this will be a home win, creating the largest UK EuroMillions winner ever. The current record holder is Les Scadding from Newport in South Wales who banked a mere £45.5 Million in November 2009. If a single player hit the jackpot this Friday they would win around £113 Million.

Want To Play..?

If you want to play this Friday but with a better chance of winning. And you wouldn’t mind sharing the jackpot, then think about playing with these guys. You get 36 times the chance of winning, and you could still walk away with a couple of million each.

The big crazy Spanish Christmas lottery draw is now over for 2009.

Life in Spain can return to normal once more – well, back to preparations for Christmas celebrations anyway.

El Gordo Winning Numbers

The winning number of the big prize was 78294. And winners stories are already beginning to appear. One of the big winners was a work syndicate at troubled Spanish travel company Viajes Marsans. Great news for a company who were in the process of making a large numer of their staff redundant.

There are thousands of numbers, and tens of thousands of prizes with El Gord. If you want to check your numbers here’s the full El Gordo results.

€2.3 Billion of El Gordo Prizes Won

When the dust settles this superdraw lottery will have paid out an incredible 2.3 billion Euros to winners. Just for this one draw. It doesn’t have anything like the biggest jackpot, but it is still the biggest lottery in the world.

Did you play this year? Did you win? Let us know below.

Spain has loads of saints and tons of fiestas to go with them. But this makes even the craziest of them look about as exciting as getting a pair of socks for Christmas…

Seriously, the entire country comes to a halt when this ONCE A YEAR draw hits.

The draw process takes HOURS because there are so many prizes. It’s quite a bizarre thing to watch the enormous draw machine, with all the results and prizes sung out by children from a local school (El Gordo draw).

It’s THE biggest lottery draw in the world. No other game has a bigger prize fund, OR pays out as many prizes.

Welcome to the Spanish ‘El Gordo’ (or ‘The Fat One’).

World’s Biggest Prize Fund

This draw pays out a prize fund of BILLIONS.

Not millions, but Billions!

But they are clever enough to keep the prizes smaller BUT pay a lot more of them. Unlike certain dumb mega-draws that insist on paying 200 million to just one prize winner… duh!

These are just the bigger prizes:-

• 195 x €3 Million prizes
• 195 x €1 Million prizes
• 195 x €500,000 prizes
• 390 x €200,000 prizes
• 1,560 x €50,000 prizes

World’s LONGEST Draw

And these are genuine different prizes. They draw tens of thousands of numbers from a huge drum, and each one wins a different prize.

The whole draw takes place on TV, and all of Spain is gripped with excitement, for HOURS!

It’s like some weird mass hypnosis voodoo or something.

Strictly Limited Ticket Supply

You can’t pick your numbers with this draw. You can only buy pre-printed tickets. Which means this once a year draw has a limited supply of tickets – by design.

Once they are sold out, that is it.

A large chunk are reserved by Spanish families – some numbers you just cannot ever buy. Seriously!

So if you want to play, now is the time.

I’ve only played this one for the last 2 draws. Last year I found a better supplier which was way cheaper, and I won and got paid a few small prizes.

I’m using the same guys again this year for El Gordo. I reckon the only way to get better value is if you live in Spain! So you can do a LOT worse than play with these guys.

See you in the big draw .

If you don’t live in Spain you’ve probably never seen this video:-

(And yup, that’s how it goes for HOURS..! Every prize and every winning number is drawn – then sung out by kids from the local school. All of Spain is gripped the whole way through.)

El Gordo is the massive once a year Christmas lottery draw – it has a ridiculous prize fund of BILLIONS.

Here’s why I like it though:-

It pays out thousands of big prizes NOT crazy amounts to just a few people. And that means much better chances of winning a big prize – because there are so many more of them. Not to mention the HUGE volume of smaller prizes too.

Makes sense right? (Try telling the folks who run US Mega Millions…)

You have to be careful where you buy tickets for El Gordo though – a lot of online places will charge you stupid amounts.

(I played with these guys last year – good service, decent price, won a few small prizes and got paid promptly – so I’m playing with them again this year).

Bet your country has nothing like this for a lottery draw..?