The Odds Of Winning Lottery Games
Your chances of winning the lottery are mainly determined by the game you choose. The odds depend mostly on the type of game (e.g. 6 balls from 49 etc). But that's not the only thing. And I've found most people don't get this right.
What Affects The Lottery Odds?
The 'type' of lottery game affects the odds most of all. That is, how many numbers you have to pick. Plus how many numbers you have to pick from.
It's quite easy to figure that picking 5 balls from 49 is easier than picking 6 balls from 49. But how much easier? Much trickier.
Problem is it's also much harder to figure out if the odds of picking 5 balls from 62 is easier (or harder) to win than 6 balls from 43..? That's brain aching math.
[The answer is actually 6 from 43, but not by much!]
Don't Let The Sneaky Bonus/Power/Supplementary Balls Get You!
Then they hit you with those extra balls. Take Mega Millions for example - you only have to match 5 main balls, right. But then they throw a sneaky 'Mega Ball' at you. It doesn't sound like much - it's 1 ball from 25.
But that right there makes your odds 25 times harder.
Incredibly if they removed the Mega Ball part of the draw, they would have to add an extra 62 main balls to make the odds roughly the same! Seriously. Would you play Mega Millions if you had to pick 5 from 132..?
This is why they use extra/supplementary balls. It feels a lot easier to win, when it really isn't. I find a lot of people don't realise this.
Important: It's Also About The Entry Price
When you're trying to figure out the odds and which game to play, it's also really important to look at the entry prices. If one game costs $1 to enter and another costs $2, that's easy. You play the cheaper game because you can buy twice as many entries for the same money, right?
But what happens when the first game is 6 from 49 and $1, but the second game is 5 from 45 and $2? Now which is better..?
Or even more confusing - some games give you multiple entries, e.g. 3 entries for $2.
It's almost like they don't want you to know what's really going on with the odds...
So How Can You Figure This All Out?
You can usually get the main odds from the lottery companies website (look for the 'small print' pages about 'game procedures' etc). But unfortunately they don't compare things or give you any way to adjust for entry prices.
If you're good with spreadsheets, then you can put all this stuff together with the right formulas and there you have it.
But I added a pretty fancy lottery calculator and a comparison tool to my Strategy Group to make this stuff super easy.
I've also started putting together some comparison pages for this too. So far I've created these:
There's a lot more to come (there's a lot of lottery games out there!). So check back later if it doesn't cover the country you want yet.
