Lotto Odds Calculator

 How to calculate the odds of winning the jackpo

Everyone wants to know their chances of winning a big prize. Odds Calculator makes it easy.

Here's how it works:

The odds of winning the jackpot of a lotto game are determined by the game's possible number combinations.

Consider a 6/49 lotto game. There are six numbers drawn from a field of 1 to 49.

  • The first number can be drawn from any of the 49 numbers.
  • The second number can be drawn from any of the 48 numbers left.
  • The third number is drawn from the 47 remaining numbers, and so on.
This is the knowledge used to determine odds. For each combination, for example, 01-02-03-04-05-06, if we arrange the numbers in different order, for example, 01-03-02-04-05-06, 01-03-04-02-05-06 ... are all the same as 01-02-03-04-05-06. There are 1x2x3x4x5x6 = 720 ways to arrange the numbers. Totally there are

possible combinations for a 6/49 lotto game. So the odds of winning the jackpot of a 6/49 lotto game are 1:13,983,816.

What about multi-state Powerball, Big Game, California Super Lotto Plus? The last digit number of these games are drawn separately from the first 5 numbers. Take Powerball as an example. Powerball is a 5/49+1/42 game whose first 5 numbers are drawn from 1 ~ 49 and last digit number is drawn from a separate number set 1 ~ 42. There are

possible combinations for the first 5 numbers drawn. So there are totally 1,960,884x42 = 80,089,128 possible combinations for Powerball. Go to our Odds Calculator to calculate the odds of state and multi-state lotteries.