The chances you have of winning a Lottery jackpot are determined by different factors such as: the count of possible numbers, the count of winning numbers drawn, whether or not the order is significant and whether the numbers are put back after drawn.
In the usual 6 from 49 lotto, there are 6 numbers drawn of a total of 49 numbers. If those 6 numbers are the same you have on your ticket, you have won the jackpot. The odds of being a jackpot winner are more or less 1 in 14 million.
The odds of winning the Lottery can really vary depending on how the Lottery is designed. There's, for example, the “Powerball”, very popular in the USA, known for the jackpots to grow very largely from time to time. This attraction is possible by designing the game to be extremely hard to win (the chances in this game are of 1 in 120,526,770). This game is almost nine times harder to win that the one on the example above. In Powerball not only do you have to pick the six numbers, but also you have to choose from two different “bags”. The first five numbers come from one bag that has numbers from 1 to 53, and the sixth number (Powerball number) comes from the second bag that has numbers from 1 to 42. To win the jackpot you have to have guessed the five numbers of the first bag and the Powerball number, pulled from the second bag.
Most of the Lotteries give smaller prizes for matching some numbers. Although these additional prizes don't increase the chances of winning the jackpot, they improve the odds of winning something and so they add a little value to the ticket.
MediaGambling Staff
