Lottery Games in the Shadows
Last Updated: Saturday 22nd October 2011, 20:58
The EuroMillions lottery has been dominating headlines for weeks, and with the jackpot having rolled over ten times in as many draws it is no big surprise that tonight’s £110 million jackpot is receiving plenty of attention. The downside of the EuroMillions game hogging the limelight is that players may neglect to consider the lottery games left standing in the shadows. These are perfectly entertaining games which offer much better odds than EuroMillions but could still deliver a life-changing jackpot to anyone who is lucky enough to win the top prize.
The odds of wining the EuroMillions jackpot are 1 in 116,531,800 and whilst it is perfectly possible to beat such long odds (as previous jackpot-winners have proven), several other lottery games give players a much better chance. It might therefore make sense to consider playing one of the more ‘winnable’ games as well as the EuroMillions game, and if you would like to do that our top picks would be as follows:
First up would be the Lotto game which introduced National Lottery gaming to the UK back in 1994. The odds of winning this jackpot (which will be worth around £6.6 million on Wednesday 7 September) are 1 in 13,983,816. The odds of winning any prize at all are around 1 in 54.
Next, why not add a Lotto Plus 5 entry to your Lotto ticket? This would give your numbers five more chances of winning in five Lotto Plus 5 draws, each offering a top prize of £250,000. The odds of winning prizes in each Lotto Plus 5 draw are the same as in the Lotto draw, but of course your single entry pays for five draws, so overall you have five times as many chances to win a prize.
Thunderball games take place on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays and offer a jackpot of £500,000. The odds of winning that jackpot are 1 in 8,060,598, and eight non-jackpot prize tiers help to bring your odds of winning any prize up to 1 in 13.
The Irish Lotto game offers a jackpot of at least €2 million and because there are only 45 balls in play your odds of winning the top prize are 1 in 8,145,060. Draws take place every Wednesday and Saturday.
As you can see, there are plenty of games that give you better odds of winning a jackpot than EuroMillions, so if you don’t win the £110 million EuroMillions jackpot tonight, why not have a go at one or two of the other lottery games? Buy your tickets online here and good luck!
