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.

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.