Welcome to the Analysis Section

Here you can find analysis, odds and statistics on the National Lottery Lotto Draw, EuroMillions as well as Monday Million.

• Lotto
• EuroMillions
• Monday Millions

Odds of Winning the Irish Lotto

The odds of getting various number combinations in the Irish Lotto (and Lotto Plus draws) are listed here. Don't let them put you off playing, but just keep in mind that the prizes the National Lottery offer are not commensurate with the actual odds. You can get better value for money (although not as big potential winnings!) by betting on certain selections of numbers...more on that soon. So, to cut to the chase, the odds are as follows*:

• Jackpot: 8,145,060 / 1
• 5 plus the bonus: 1,392,317 / 1
• 5 numbers: 34,807 / 1
• 4 plus the bonus: 14,274 / 1
• 4 numbers: 732 / 1
• 3 plus the bonus: 579 / 1
• 3 numbers: 45 / 1

Basically what the above means is that if the National Lottery Lotto draw was fair, then considering you pay €1.50 per line, the jackpot should be a minimum of over €12M every time! So you could look at it like the National Lottery is only giving you 16% of what you should be getting, if you win a jackpot of €2M.

But it gets much worse as you go down the payout structure...the real odds of getting 5 number plus the bonus are 1,392,317 / 1. If you match 5 plus the bonus, you get...wait for it...€25K!! If they were fair about it you would be getting over €2M, which means they are paying you only approx. 1.2% of what you should get. Unbelievable.

All is not lost though...there is much better value to be found when playing the Lotto, as detailed in the next section.

Keno Style Lotto Betting

You may or may not be familiar with Keno lottery games - they are big in casinos in the States for example, but not so much Ireland or Europe. These are lottery games where a certain number of balls are drawn from the drum, and you pick numbers as normal, except you have a choice in the number of balls you want to play, and you usually have to match all balls in your selection in order to win.

For example, there might be 50 balls in the drum, and 8 are picked. You have the choice to pick between 2 and 6 balls. Let's say you decide to pick 4 balls. In this game you would win a prize only if all four of your chosen numbers are drawn - you get nothing if you match 3 of the 8 drawn numbers.

Coming soon: information on the best places to play Keno-style Lotto (in the normal Lotto Draws!), and all the odds of the various combinations. Be sure to check back soon.

Most Frequently Occurring Numbers

Note: Our analysis below is based on the analysis of the Lotto draws since the 4th November 2006, when 45 balls were introduced. Any analysis which includes data prior to that date would be completely meaningless, for example balls 43, 44 and 45 would always appear to be the least popular balls, which is not a true reflection of the results of Lotto Draws with 45 numbers.

* Note: the odds given are almost exactly correct, but have been rounded up, for example the odds of getting 3 numbers is 44.6/1, but that has been rounded to 45/1. The method used to calculate the odds is the hypergeometric probability distribution algorithm.