Box Bets and You

Your best bet for winning is something called a box bet. This type of bet essentially removes the number order requirement for winning a ticket, such that if you pick 1-2-3 as a box bet, you’ll win as long as there is a 1, 2, and 3 drawn in any order. Your box bet will win on 2-3-1, whereas a straight ticket would not.

Under box betting there are two different categories, a 3 way and a 6 way. A 3 way is when you have two of the same numbers in your card, like 5-5-6. That means, of course, that you can only make 3 different combination with them and your odds of winning are lower. Accordingly, your payout will be higher.

With a 6-way box bet, you have 3 unique numbers that can win in any order, giving you 6 total combinations. This bet offers the highest odds of winning, and is where you want to focus.

Box Betting at its Best

So what are your odds with a 6 way boxed bet? Let’s run the numbers.

We know that the numbers recycle into the pool, so the odds are the same of picking any number in each draw. That means 10%. So .1 * .1 * .1 equals 1/1000. However, since order doesn’t matter, we need to figure out how many unique combinations of numbers there are and divide our result by that.

We know that in a system with 3 numbers there are only 3 * 2 * 1 combinations of numbers, or 6. So we divide out 1000 by 6 and get a 1 in 166 chance of winning, or about 0.6 percent.

Games of Chance

If you’re thinking, “Huh?” right now, don’t despair. These are actually fantastic odds when it comes to games of chance, and you won’t find them this good anywhere else. That much I can promise. Even in Vegas, even at the blackjack table where you can actually get a small edge over the house if you’re really, really good.

But I suppose part of the fun of the lottery isn’t running the numbers and figuring out that you’ll never win, it’s running the numbers and figuring out what you’ll do with the millions of dollars you could win if lightning strikes. Which it does. Quite frequently. And you can’t be the one that winds if you don’t have a ticket!

How the Daily 3 Works

So what game has the best odds? Generally, the Daily 3 game offers the best odds since you only have to pick three numbers, and there are multiple ticket types that you can buy to increase those odds even further. But let me explain that.

The way that Daily 3 games work is that you have to pick three numbers, in order, from a pool that does not get smaller. That means that you can pick 1 more than once for example. The winning numbers could be 5-5-5, whereas in some of the bigger games, once 5 is drawn, it can no longer be picked again. This system means that your odds of winning a straight ticket are 1 in 1000, which looks like a sure thing next to some of the 1 in 150 million games.

Best Odds = Best Chance

You best chance of winning the lottery is playing the game with the best odds. Simple right? Well, not really. Because the games with the best odds of winning obviously don’t pay out the stunning, headline-grabbing jackpots. And what fun is that?

Well, it’s always fun to win money. And since the chances of winning the big jackpots are almost incomprehensible, you’ll be better off in the long run playing the games you can actually win, even if the jackpots won’t allow you to quit your job and move to the islands.