Which National Lottery Game Has The Best Odds

Playing the lottery is an incredibly popular pastime, with most countries in the world offering multiple national and regional games. However, any time there’s a big prize—like the $1.05 billion Mega Millions jackpot up for grabs in January 2021—all we hear about is how impossible the odds of winning are. The UK National Lottery Odds. The UK National Lottery features several games, but the Lotto is most popular as it boasts the biggest prizes. Camelot, the corporation behind the National Lottery, re-engineered the Lotto game in 2015, which has greatly impacted the odds of winning. Now, there are ten new numbers to the draw taking the total to 59.

Choosing the best National Lottery game to play is not as simple as it sounds.

Because the right game for you is not necessarily the right game for someone else.

So let’s talk about odds first.

Which UK Lottery Has The Best Odds?

The UK lottery that is the easiest to win is the game that has the lowest odds.

But which odds should you be looking at?

The National Lottery publish figures for all the different prize levels. Plus a figure for winning “any prize”.

The most important figure though is the odds of winning the jackpot. Because that’s what we’re really aiming for. 🙂

It is interesting to know that the odds of winning ‘any Lotto prize’ are 1 in 9.3, but that could (and most likely is) just a £2 lucky dip. So never use the ‘any prize’ figure alone to decide which game to play.

What Are The Jackpot Odds

The National Lottery currently have 4 main games – Lotto, EuroMillions, Set For Life and Thunderball. Plus 2 Hotpicks versions – Lotto Hotpicks and EuroMillions Hotpicks.

These are the jackpot odds for the UK games according to the National Lottery:-

You can see how dramatically the jackpot odds differ:-

• EuroMillions is 3 times harder to win than Lotto.
• And Lotto is 3 times harder to win than Set For Life.
• And Set for Life is twice as hard to win as Thunderball.

So the main game with the best odds is Thunderball.

Why Ticket Price Is Important

You’ll also notice I’ve added the ticket price to this table too. Because that makes a huge difference to the real odds.

Lotto costs twice as much to play as Thunderball. So whilst the odds are 6 times tougher for Lotto, when you also adjust for ticket price that actually makes it about 12 times harder!

Thunderball is the cheapest main game anyway. So it still wins out when you adjust for ticket price.

Why Jackpot Size Is Important

There is however one more thing you need to consider. How big are those jackpots? Are they big enough? Or are they too big..?

How can a jackpot ever be too big? Well, if it means the game is 43 times harder to win (EuroMillions vs Thunderball) then that should matter to you.

So before you decide which game to actually play, ask yourself how big a jackpot is truly big enough. Don’t just be blinded by insane rollovers. That’s the National Lottery marketing machine at work. 🙂

The jackpot for Thunderball is actually only £500,000. I say ‘only’, that’s a really nice prize. But it’s not big enough for everyone, so even though it’s the best UK lottery odds (of the main games) it’s not the right game for everyone.

And nobody can tell you what the right size jackpot is for you – that’s something you have to decide for yourself.

Ahh, Just One More Thing…

Best Lottery Game To Play

Which National Lottery Game Has The Best Odds Today

It would be great if there was one simple answer to this whole question.

But this strategic thinking is the difference between getting the best chance of winning (by applying lottery strategies that work) and just blindly buying lucky dips of whatever game looks big and shiny! 🙂

Now the UK National Lottery also provide those Hotpicks games, which run off the back of the two big main games Lotto and EuroMillions. And these allow you to choose your prize level – play Lotto Hotpicks Pick 5 and you’re only playing for a Match 5 prize. It’s a nice prize at £350,000. The odds look good at 1 in 834,398.

But remember with Hotpicks you cannot win any other prize level other than the one you choose. You play Pick 5 and only Match 4 you get nothing. That may not matter but it’s important to factor that in.

Hotpicks also allows you to go lower. You can even play Pick 1 Match 1 on Lotto Hotpicks. Which has to be the most pointless ticket it’s possible to buy on any lottery game. The odds are the best of any UK lottery game at an ‘amazing’ 1 in 10 chance of winning. But the prize is £6! That’s it. It still costs you £1 to play, but you cannot win anything else other than £6. Please don’t play this. 🙂

Choosing The Right Game

Lottery Games With Best Odds

Looking at the odds is important. But don’t just look at the odds, you need to take into account at least the ticket price and the size of the jackpot too. Yes, there are more factors to consider too, but this post is already getting long.

What Lottery Is Playing Tonight

If you choose more carefully then you get the best odds for your budget. And that could make all the difference between just dreaming and living your dream.