What Are Your Odds Of Winning The Lottery

What Are Your Odds Of Winning The Lottery
Sarah Ryan
Written by:
Sarah Ryan
Andrew McDermott
Fact checked by:
Andrew McDermott
🗓
Updated: February 9th 2024

We’re not gonna bluff you: the lottery is one of the longest shot longshot wagers anyone can play. At least online casinos can be really generous with their free online slots, poker promos, and free sweeps cash casino promos, and betting, while still ultimately a game of chance, is also a game testing the players’ intuition and ability to follow predictable trends.

The lottery, on the other hand, offers none of that; besides slots, it’s probably one of the chanciest games of chance you can ever play. How longshot are those longshot odds? Well, according to Wonderopolis.org, if you assume an average lottery ticket with six numbers out of a 49 number pool, your odds of winning the jackpot and drawing the correct six-number combination equates to nearly one in 14 million.

But how do those odds stack up with the most popular lottery raffles in the country? Well, your probable odds of winning the Mega Millions, according to that same estimate page, are an even astronomically bigger longshot – nearly one in 176 million. They don’t call it the MEGA Millions for nothing!

Yeah. You could string together a parlay with as many legs as a centipede and probably have better odds of hitting that than a lottery jackpot. We don’t know the numbers on that, but it’s an educated guess. If you are wondering how some other numbers compare though, then you might want to take a look at some of these odds (and find out why you should put $2 down on a lotto raffle anyway)!

Lottery Odds Comparison

Here is a list of some fortunate (and not so fortunate) things that are more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery:

  • Paying your student loans in full: 1 in 6 odds, at least in the UK (according to SaveTheStudent.org)
  • Being struck by lightning: 1 in 10 million odds
  • Dying from improperly using a right-handed product as a southpaw: 1 in 4.4 million odds
  • Kim Kardashian becoming the next POTUS: 1 in 81 odds
  • Finding a four-leaf clover: 1 in 10,000 odds
  • Becoming an astronaut: 1 in 12 million odds
  • Being struck by a meteor: 1 in 700,000 odds, per astronomer Alan Harris
  • Winning an Olympic gold medal: 1 in 662,000 odds
  • Dating a supermodel: 1 in 88,000 odds
  • Dying in a plane crash: 1 in 11 million odds, according to NPR
  • Becoming president: 1 in 10 million odds, according to Baer
  • Being wrongfully convicted of a crime: 1 in 3,703 odds, according to late SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia
  • Being hospitalized over a pogo stick injury: 1 in 115,300 odds
  • Having conjoined twins: 1 in 200,000 odds, per the University of Maryland Medical Center

If you haven’t gotten it through your head already, these odds are all pretty long, but nowhere near as long as the lottery. Even the riskiest wagers on the best online sportsbooks, free online slots with no deposit promos, or online casinos with real money aren’t quite as risky and long as all of those odds.

But although things like betting and online poker are still largely games of chance, there are still viable tactics one can utilize to improve their chances of winning. Would similar tactics be effective at improving your odds of winning the lottery?

How To Improve Your Odds Of Winning The Lottery

At the end of the day, the lottery is, for all intents and purposes, a 99.9% game of chance. However, there are still steps one could take to very, very, very marginally improve their shot at hitting the jackpot:

  • Buy more tickets: Don’t overspend like crazy of course, since the odds are still very long, but it’s common sense that more tickets = more drawings to win. One cost-effective approach you can take to doing this is through forming a lottery syndicate, or a pool where you and a few friends can split the winnings if luck strikes.
  • Pick your numbers carefully: The best jackpot odds generally fall on games and raffle tickets with numbers that aren’t consecutive or grouped closely together. It’s widely believed that the best number sum total for jackpot winning odds, while still slim, typically falls between 104 and 176.
  • Play less popular lottery drawings: If you’re trying to improve your odds, even ever so slightly, it’s helpful to focus on lottery games with the least potential competition.

These three perks are why Jackpocket is one of our favored online lottery platforms. You can make pools easily, find smaller raffles with better odds, and you don’t have to walk to the nearest convenience store to buy tickets - just buy them from the comfort of your own home!

Lotteries are one of the longest wagers one can play, but they also tout the lowest possible financial risk and highest possible financial reward, with most raffle tickets costing you as little as $5, $2, or in select cases, sometimes nothing at all. Now with the latest Jackpocket offers, you can get started with no risk!

Simply click this link to activate the offer and you can start with a free $2 entry today by using code ODDSSEEKER when signing up to Jackpocket!

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Consider signing up for Jackpocket today with a free $2 entry, and consider signing up for our mailing list to get more iGaming news, tips, and tricks.

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Sarah Ryan

Sarah's our Copy Editor. With a long career in hospitality, Sarah knows entertainment & gaming like none other!

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