A Superdraw is like any other National Lottery draw, but in this case the jackpot fund has been added to by the operator of the lottery to make it even bigger than usual, and enables the operator to guarantee a minimum jackpot level.

A Superdraw can take place on a Wednesday or a Saturday, as the operator chooses, but the operator is not free to inject as much money into the jackpot fund as it likes. Instead, it has to adhere to rules which state that the Superdraw prize can be no greater than the average of the four highest jackpot pools from the last five regular draws, after rounding down to the nearest £100,000. This sum can be doubled and set as the actual jackpot value or it can be added to whatever jackpot value is generated from the usual sale of tickets.

Superdraws can be used in one of two ways – either as a mark of celebration (for example, to mark the birthday of the lottery itself) or as a way of encouraging players when ticket sales start dwindling in number.

The first ever Superdraw was held on Saturday 7 January, 1995, which was in fact the eighth National Lottery draw. The jackpot was a guaranteed £10 million, but no player matched all six numbers so the prize was rolled over to the ninth draw. On that occasion there were an incredible 133 players matching all six numbers and winning a share of the prize, so no individual “super-winner” was created.

The first four lottery draws to take place on a Wednesday were also Superdraws – something that was obviously designed to make the midweek draws as appealing as possible. The first jackpot was worth £9,999,999 and the next three were worth £10 million, £7 million and £7 million.

Superdraw Trivia

• The biggest ever Superdraw prize was £23,313,361 on Saturday 8 January, 2000.

• The smallest ever Superdraw prize was £555,556 on Wednesday 12 February, 1997.

• The average Superdraw prize is around £2.5 million.

• The average number of Superdraw prize winners is four.

• The most winners of a Superdraw prize is 32, on Saturday 4 November, 2000.