A reality check, kindly delivered

The odds, told straight.

Every figure below is the actual Division 1 probability for that game, all ten we cover, Australian and international: no rounding down, no soft-pedalling. Here's what those numbers actually feel like, next to a few other famously unlikely things.

Every game on this site, ranked

Australian and international together, easiest at the top. Each figure is worked out from the game's own format: the number of ways to choose the main numbers, multiplied by the ways to choose the bonus where one is drawn from a separate barrel. Nothing here comes from draw history, so none of it moves from week to week, and every figure is the same for whatever combination you pick.

#GameOdds of the top division
1Saturday Lotto6 from 45 + 2 supplementaries · draws Sat1 in 8,145,060the same odds as Weekday Windfall
1Weekday Windfall6 from 45 + 2 supplementaries · draws Mon, Wed, Fri1 in 8,145,060the same odds as Saturday Lotto
3Irish Lotto6 from 47 + bonus · draws Wed, Sat1 in 10,737,5731.3× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
4UK Lotto6 from 59 · draws Wed, Sat1 in 45,057,4745.5× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
5Oz Lotto7 from 47 + 3 supplementaries · draws Tue1 in 62,891,4997.7× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
6Powerball7 from 35 + Powerball from 20 · draws Thu1 in 134,490,40016.5× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
7European Millions5 from 50 + 2 Lucky Stars · draws Tue, Fri1 in 139,838,16017.2× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
8USA Mega Lotto5 from 70 + Mega Ball from 24 · draws Wed, Sat1 in 290,472,33635.7× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
9USA Power Lotto5 from 69 + Powerball from 26 · draws Tue, Thu, Sun1 in 292,201,33835.9× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall
10Italian Super Jackpot6 from 90 + Jolly · draws Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat1 in 622,614,63076.4× harder than Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall

Saturday Lotto and Weekday Windfall share the top rank because they are the same 6 from 45 game. They are identical at Division 1 and not identical below it: Weekday Windfall pays a flat guaranteed $1m to up to six winners and does not roll over. Being 76 times easier than the game at the bottom is also not the same as being easy. The whole table is a long way from likely, and easier odds come with smaller top prizes, which is the trade being made.

Things that are, technically, more likely

Everything here is rarer than it sounds, and none of it is a lottery. Each bar shows how rare the odds are, from "happens to somebody most weeks" on the left to "you would tell that story forever" on the right. The lottery figures are in the table above, and every one of them sits a long way past the end of this chart.

Born with an extra finger or toe (about 1 in 1,000 births)1 in 1,000
Finding a four-leaf clover on your first proper look1 in 10,000
An amateur golfer holing a hole in one1 in 12,500
Struck by lightning in your lifetime (US estimate)1 in 15,300
Dealt a royal flush in your first poker hand1 in 649,740
Two golfers acing the same hole in the same round1 in 26,000,000

Sources: polydactyly, extra fingers or toes, at roughly 1 in 1,000 live births, a figure reported consistently across paediatric literature. Hole in one for an amateur, 1 in 12,500, and two players acing the same hole in one round at about 1 in 26,000,000, both from the National Hole-in-One Registry and the insurers who underwrite those competitions. Four-leaf clover: the commonly cited 1 in 10,000. Lightning: US National Weather Service lifetime estimate, an American figure used as a ballpark rather than a local one. Royal flush: exact combinatorics, 4 hands out of 2,598,960. The bars run on a logarithmic scale, because a linear one would squash everything past the clover into a single block.

So, worth playing?

That's genuinely your call, and it is not the same question as whether it is a good bet. It isn't one, and no generator here or anywhere changes that. But a ticket buys something the maths never counted: a few days where the question is open. Where you catch yourself working out which of your mates you'd tell first, and whether you'd actually keep working. That is worth a couple of dollars to a lot of people, and there is nothing daft about it. If you play, a small amount you're comfortable never seeing again is the whole game.

And if you like thinking about the other end of it, our tax and yield calculator works out what a jackpot would actually pay you per year once the ATO has had its turn on the interest.

If the maths behind these numbers interests you, our Statistics Explained glossary covers the actual concepts, probability, independence, expected value, in plain language, and our world odds comparison and consecutive numbers articles dig into specific questions people ask about odds like these.

If you'd rather odds that actually move in your favour, every board in our free Arcade is solver-certified, and there's always at least one path to a win, every single day, and it costs nothing. And if the numbers on this page ever stop feeling fun and start feeling heavy, Gambling Help Online is free, confidential and open 24/7 on 1800 858 858.