Odds of Winning the National Lottery Lotto Draw

[monkeymagic]

Found this handy odds calculator for any lotto game around the world.

It also explains the maths as to why the odds for winning the lottery are approx: 14 million to 1.

I always wondered how they arrived at the figure 14 million to 1 for the UK lotto, as when I tried to work it out I arrived at:

You can choose 1 of 49 numbers for your first pick
You can choose 1 of 48 numbers for your second pick
You can choose 1 of 47 numbers for your third pick
You can choose 1 of 46 numbers for your fourth pick
You can choose 1 of 45 numbers for your fifth pick
You can choose 1 of 44 numbers for your sixth pick

Therefore 49 x 48 x 47 x 46 x 45 x 44 = 10,068,347,520.

So, a 1 in 10 billion chance roughly.. However, this obviously isn't right, as the jackpot is won by at least one person most weeks, and the chance of winning is quoted as *only* 1 in 14 million.

Anyway, I found the reason for the difference in calculations, is that you can pick your numbers is any order. This increases your chance by 720 times, and gives you a 1 in 13,983,816 chance

Here's the webpage for those interested: Lottery Odds Calculator for UK Lotto

Click the "Try another problem like this one" link at the top of the page to work out the odds of winning any other lottery.

It also has a fascinating experiment to try involving a long piece of rope and 2 grains of sand, to show you just how unlikely 1 in 14 million is.

[LottoGuru]

This awful odds could be overcome by betting on lotto numbers on bookmakers site, like: bet365.com, betfairlotto.co.uk