What are the odds of winning LOTTO 6aus49?
The odds in LOTTO 6aus49 are not a matter of opinion – they can be calculated exactly. Here is the calculation.
Where the 13,983,816 comes from
In LOTTO 6aus49 you mark 6 numbers out of 49. Order does not matter and no number repeats, so the count of possible lines is the binomial coefficient "49 choose 6": (49 × 48 × 47 × 46 × 45 × 44) divided by (6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1). That comes to 13,983,816.
Those roughly 14 million lines are the basis for everything else. A single line matches all six numbers with a probability of 1 in 13,983,816 – that is the chance of prize tier 2. The jackpot adds the Superzahl, drawn separately from ten digits (0 to 9), which multiplies the possibilities by 10. Hence the familiar jackpot figure of 1 in 139,838,160.
For a sense of that scale: playing one line twice a week, it would take over a million years before you would statistically hit all six numbers plus the Superzahl once.
All nine prize tiers and their probabilities
Tier 1 (6 correct + Superzahl): about 1 in 139,838,160. Tier 2 (6 correct): about 1 in 15,537,573. Tier 3 (5 correct + Superzahl): about 1 in 542,008. Tier 4 (5 correct): about 1 in 60,223.
Tier 5 (4 correct + Superzahl): about 1 in 10,324. Tier 6 (4 correct): about 1 in 1,147. Tier 7 (3 correct + Superzahl): about 1 in 567. Tier 8 (3 correct): about 1 in 63. Tier 9 (2 correct + Superzahl): about 1 in 76.
Adding all nine together, the probability that a single line wins anything at all is roughly 1 in 31. That sounds attainable – and it is. It is however overwhelmingly the two lowest tiers, whose payouts are typically a few euros.
Why no strategy changes these numbers
A draw has no memory. The 49 balls do not know what was drawn last week, and the machine is inspected and logged before every draw. Each of the 13,983,816 combinations is therefore exactly equally likely in every single draw.
That explicitly includes combinations people intuitively treat as improbable: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 has precisely the same chance as 7, 13, 22, 31, 38, 45. The sense that the first line is "impossible" comes only from there being very many scattered-looking combinations and very few ordered-looking ones – the individual line is unaffected by that.
"Hot" and "cold" numbers change nothing either. A number appearing above average across the last 100 draws is statistical noise, not signal: with 49 numbers and a limited number of draws, deviations of that size are mathematically expected. That is exactly why our statistics page presents frequencies as an observation and never as a forecast.
What can actually be influenced
One thing can be influenced – not the chance of matching, but the expected size of a prize if you do. The reason: within a prize tier, LOTTO 6aus49 splits the pool between all winners in that tier.
Many players pick birth dates, so numbers 1 to 31 disproportionately often, along with popular patterns on the slip. When a draw lands in that popular range, correspondingly more people share the same payout. An unpopular combination does not win more often, but is less often shared when it does.
That – and explicitly nothing else – is what our AI model optimises for: it estimates how popular a combination likely is among other players and prefers lines with lower estimated split risk. The probability of matching stays exactly 1 in 13,983,816. How that performs in practice is published unedited on our accuracy page.
Frequently asked questions
Do multiple lines improve my chance? Yes, but linearly and in proportion to the stake: twelve lines are twelve of 13,983,816 possibilities, about 1 in 1,165,318 – a system ticket merely bundles that systematically without changing the mathematics.
Is a system ticket "better" than normal play? It guarantees that certain matches spread across several lines, and raises the chance of a win simply by playing more lines. The stake rises accordingly. There is no mathematical edge per euro staked.
Why does every source quote slightly different numbers? Usually rounding, or tiers with and without the Superzahl being grouped differently. The basis – 13,983,816 combinations and one Superzahl out of ten – is the same everywhere.