What Are the Odds of Winning the Lotto?

The question, What are the odds of winning the lotto? is a simple one. Most would say that the odds are astronomical, approximately 1-in-193-million. That number really doesn’t sound too good, does it? To put it in perspective, if you buy one ticket, your odds of winning would be approximately 45-to-1. Fold your dough and all you would have to show for it is a 1-in-45 chance. Seems like an astronomical number, doesn’t it?

But have you ever considered what a dollar figure would be if you were to win the lotto? Go to a couple of coin stores and look around. Suppose you buy a $1,000 worth of tickets. You have the same odds of winning as someone who buys one ticket. In other words, you are 45 times more likely to win. It’s a great value, don’t you think?

$1,000,000 would buy more than enough tickets to accomplish anything. Maybe you could syndicate with a family or friends and pool your collective efforts toward a huge prize. Maybe you could sell your tickets at a 50-off at a Las Vegas Flea Market, and make $10,000 or more. It’s definitely a big win, and it would make a great big mess of your paycheck.

Now suppose you’re a big fan of the Powerball lottery. Instead of heading to the store, picking your own numbers, you could use the handy tool of lotto software. That will increase your odds of winning dramatically, depending on the kind of lotto you play. If you play a 6-50 lotto, you have a 1-in-18,991,816,000 chance of winning. That’s pretty tough, but it could be a great way to pad your wallet.

The next time you’re at the store, ask the clerk if they sell the instant scratch-off tickets. If they say they do, then you know there’s a great chance you’re going to lose your money, rather than win a fortune. Nonetheless, it’s a good reminder to purchase tickets in a timely manner.

If you don’t buy tickets in a timely manner, the games might go on sales before you buy them, thus causing an empty ticket shelf. An empty shelf is no good to a lotto player. Get your tickets from the cashiers counter, instead of the store.

This only applies to games that cost money to play. In spite of how cheap they are, the scratch-off tickets featured prominently at the store are still highly profitable for the lotto sharks. It’s just that most of them are so packed together waiting to be sold that you don’t get a chance to purchase them all at once.

For the scratch-off tickets that win, the payoff is usually a lot higher than for the ones that don’t win. So, if you win the top prize in your Poker88, Powerball, or Mega Millions game, you’ll get most of the prize money. Generally, the higher the prize figure, the bigger the second prize is going to be, as well.

However, the instant tickets don’t always win prizes. Lotto relegation plays a big role here. In North America, a lot of people would convene around a card board and scratch off the squares of their prospective winning, claiming the prize from a lotto game that has already acquired its refund. The following week, another round of betting will occur.

Here’s the bottom line about all of this. You have to buy the instant scratch-offs, and scratch off the squares, and wait for the game to get cheaper or for the cash out refilled with the money that was won. When the cash out occurs, you might have already lost the costs of the tickets.