Statistics about how to win the lottery

There are several theories that do the rounds online and in the real world about which lotteries are, supposedly, the easiest to win.

Of course, the conjecture is largely theoretical and there are no guarantees when it comes to winning the jackpot or smaller prizes in the lottery.

There are, however, some statistical pointers that can make decisions on which lotteries to go with more interesting and intriguing.

First up, there’s the frequency of draws. Obviously, one lottery that happens more often than another gives those who enter more chances of winning in any given week.

South Africans will be familiar with the SA Powerball and Lotto, which happen twice a week. That’s a chance at the start and towards the end of the week to win.

But the French Lotto is an excellent example of a draw that happens not once, not twice, but three times per week. Indeed, it is on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Then, when plotting and planning how to win the lottery, one can consider the odds of winning any prize. The French Lotto leads the pack here, too, with odds of approximately one in six of winning any prize.

It is followed by the Spanish Lotto’s one in 10, Austrian Lotto’s one in 12 and EuroMillions’ one in 13.

As for winning the jackpot, the chances of this happening weigh in at one in 6.7 million with the Swedish Lotto, one in 8.1 million with the Austrian Lotto and one in almost 11 million with the Irish Lotto.

Those are significantly smaller odds of winning the main jackpot in the lottery than say, in the UK Lotto or EuroMillions. For the former it’s about one in 45 million and the latter one in 140 million. That’s effectively United Kingdom versus the entire European continent there, so it’s understandable that one’s jackpot odds are so much higher than the other.

Interestingly, one step down from the jackpot prize into second-tier prizes, the UK Lotto and EuroMillions are just short of level pegging. The odds of winning the main prize just under the jackpot comes in at about one in seven million for both. Second-tier prizes can still be massively valuable, even if not of jackpot heights. This is especially the case for South Africans, when the exchange rate translates as pounds and euros to rands.

For further comparative purposes, but this time more locally, the SA Powerball versus the SA Lotto makes for interesting reading. Here, the odds of winning any prize in the Lotto are around one in 96 and the Powerball one in 38. For a mid-table prize range look at both, consider that odds of getting three numbers and the bonus ball right in the SA Lotto are about one in 1,000 – and the odds in the same prize category for the SA Powerball are approximately one in 3,000.

To reiterate, at the end of the proverbial day, there are no guaranteed ways to win the lottery, but it’s always handy to have some indicators and statistics at hand when it comes to making a few informed decision.