Bits & Odds

Methodology

Every number on this site comes from official lottery prize data plus arithmetic you can check. This page is the arithmetic.

What the lotteries publish

For each game a state lottery publishes the prize levels, the printed odds of hitting each level, how many prizes of each level the game started with, and how many are still unclaimed. Some states publish tickets printed instead of per-tier odds; where that happens we derive the odds, and we say so below.

The formulas

For a prize tier t with published odds 1 in O, N prizes at launch and R unclaimed:

Annuity prizes are converted to their nominal total: "$1,000 a week for life" is counted as $1,000,000, and "$50,000 a year for 20 years" as $1,000,000, matching how the lotteries themselves advertise them. Free-ticket prizes are counted at the ticket price.

Known weaknesses

The tickets-remaining estimate is an unweighted average across tiers, so a top-prize tier with five prizes counts as much as a $5 tier with two million. When a game is nearly sold out the small tiers dominate reality but the average lags. We keep this method because it is the one behind every historical number on the site, and changing it would silently rewrite years of comparisons; a weighted version is planned as a separate column.

Texas does not publish per-tier odds, so we derive them from the stated ticket count divided by prizes in that tier. Michigan publishes only the top prize levels, so its lower tiers are derived from overall odds. New Jersey publishes tickets printed rather than tier odds. In each case the figures come out very close to the states' own published overall odds, but they are derived, not quoted.

Finally, remaining-prize counts are only as fresh as the lottery's own publishing. A prize claimed today may not appear for a day or two. Where a state's data stops updating, we show a notice on that state's pages rather than presenting old figures as current.

Why some games show a payout above 100%

About one game in seventy on this site shows a current payout over 100%. That is not a typo and not, by itself, an error: it says the prizes still unclaimed are worth more than the tickets still unsold would cost to buy. It happens late in a game's life, when most tickets have sold but the largest prizes have not been hit. It is also exactly where the averaging weakness above bites hardest, because the estimate of tickets remaining is thinnest when a game is nearly sold out. We publish the number as the model produces it, mark it on the tables, and say plainly that its precision is low. What it reliably tells you is that the game is unusually rich in unclaimed prizes. What it does not tell you is that buying it is profitable: the remaining tickets are scattered across thousands of retailers and you cannot buy them all.

Update cadence

We re-read all 9 states every day and store a snapshot of every prize tier, which is what makes the history charts and claim logs possible. Snapshots are never overwritten.