"A site for sore losers"
The explanation is down here.
This simple spreadsheet shows your chances of winning a prize in almost any pick-your-number lottery. You can look up popular lotteries from around the world, or change the numbers and payouts to build your own fantasy lottery.
Here's what the terms mean:
Click this drop-down menu to see a list of many domestic and international lotteries. Select one, and the table will adjust to show how much you can win in that lottery, and how likely you are to win.
These two drop-lists show 1) how many numbers you buy, and 2) how many numbers you chose from. So for example, in the 6/49, you buy 6 numbers out of 49. The more numbers, the steeper the odds.
Besides the normal range of numbers to choose from, many lotteries draw Supplementary Numbers to offer extra (and sometimes bigger) prizes. There are basically two types of Suplementary Numbers:
Bonus: The Bonus Number is drawn from the remaining field of numbers. For example, after the first 6 numbers are drawn in the 6/49, the Bonus number is selected from the remaining 43 numbers. Most lotteries draw just one Bonus Number, while some Australian lotteries draw two. You can choose the number of Bonus numbers from the first drop-list. 0 means no Bonus prizes.
Power Ball: Some lotteries call it the Lucky Ball or Lucky Star, but whatever the name, the principle is the same: you pick an extra number, which is drawn from a different set of numbers. For example, in the US MegaMillions, you pick 5 numbers from a field of 75, plus a single Power Ball from a field of 15 numbers. The Euromillions and Euro-Jackpot feature two "Lucky Star" numbers, which offer a greater range of prizes.
In general, the differences between a Bonus and a Power Ball lottery are:
If the the second droplist says "Bonus," then it's a Bonus lottery. Changing this to a number turns this lottery into a Power Ball lottery. And the higher the number, the steeper the odds.
These are the different prize categories you are trying to win. Winning categories are shown in black, while non-winning cagtegories are greyed out. The + sign indicates a bonus category, while "PB" is used for Power Ball winners.
The boxes in this column show how much, if any, you can win by matching this many numbers. You can easily change the prize amounts in these boxes. (Don't worry about the currency symbols; those will be added for you.) Changing the prize from 0 will turn the row from grey to black. It might also alter the numbers in the next colums.
This shows how many different ways there are to win this particular prize. So if you were to by all 13,983,816 different tickets on the 6/49, you would win 1 jackpot, 6 5+Bonus prizes, 252 5/6 prizes, etc.
There are a couple of things to note here. First, these numbers represent the different types of winning tickets, or number combinations. It doesn't mean how many people can actually win these prizes. So while there is only one way for a number combination to make the jackpot, it is quite possible for several people to win it. They just all bought the same numbers.
Secondly, if you change a Bonus/Powerball category into a winner or non-winner (i.e., change it to or from 0), this changes not only the number of Winners on that line, but the one below it as well. That is because you cannot win both prizes with one ticket. So, for example, changing the 5+ prize to 0 means those people who would have won the Bonus prize now join the regular 5/6 winners.
These are the odds for each category. This is the number of tickets you'd have to buy to have a pretty good chance of getting this prize. Note that these odds are based on single ticket winnings, so they might disagree with the odds published on some lottery companies' websites. For instance, the Wisconsin Megabucks and Kansas Super Cash sell 2 tickets for a dollar; since this gives two chances for a win, then these companies offer odds only half as steep. Lottario's marketing is even sharper. Their tickets cost $2, and the second one is free.
Not also that these numbers are rounded, and so they might not exactly match the odds published by the lottery companies. If you'd like something more accurate, just run your mouse over any of the odds to see a multi-decimal value.
These are the totals: The total number of different winning tickets, and the likelihood of winning anything, no matter how small.
How much it costs to buy one ticket. If the prizes for some international lotteries look rather generous, then check the price of the ticket. Odds are, it might have extra zeroes.
The bottom line. What percentage you're expected to win in the long run. For instance, if the payback is 46%, then you'd win back 46 cents for every dollar you spent. Please be aware that the payback can change from one week to the next. If nobody wins the jackpot for that week, then the prize money goes back into the pot for next week.
If you want to know a lottery's current payback, just go its website (which you can do by clicking on the lottery logo at the bottom of the table) and plug in the estimated prize payouts for that week.
If you set all the prizes to the same as the ticket price, then the payback will equal exactly 100%.
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