While online lottery could only come into the picture relatively recently (after the invention of computers, the internet and then online gambling), the first recorded lottery or lottery-like games were in the Chinese Han Dynasty between 205 and 187 BC.
Now if you want to differentiate between lottery and keno, you can do that, but they are pretty much the same game. Anyway, the first lottery was held during the Roman Empire. According to Wikipedia, it was primarily for fun and held at dinner parties, where guests would receive a ticket and win prizes that were generally some form of gifts like fancy dishware, for example.
Further down the line, in the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, we see organised lotteries with tickets for sale. As time went by, in most countries of the world, a form of lottery was born, and it was used as a means to bring funds to the governing state through the sales of tickets.
You can find national lotteries and even forms of national lottery online for most countries but, in this day and age, we see a transition towards globalisation even in online gambling and lotteries.
This means that while in the past you would have had no choice but to play your own country’s lottery with no other options, now, you can play lottery online. You get access to dozens of lotteries from other countries as well as international/trans-national lotteries.
But let’s see together what exactly it is you gain by playing online lottery games and how you can use the powers of online gambling to your advantage.
Difference between Lottery and Betting on Lottery Online
The most important thing you need to understand about lottery online UK, USA, EU and any other country that offers online lottery is that the game itself is different. Betting on lottery tickets online and betting at brick and mortar, street state-operated lotteries is entirely different.
Online lottery bets come with fixed odds (just as sports betting does) and the odds are calculated according to probability. In other words, betting on the online lottery and buying a physical lottery ticket is different.
Let’s take an example to explain. Assume a 6/49 type of lottery. 6 winning numbers will be extracted out of a total of 49 numbers. This is just an example as you can find many different types of lottery like 1/20, 5/40, 6/90, 20/80, 10/20 etc., but the basic principles still apply.
If you were to go to a street vendor and buy an actual 6/49 ticket, you’d have to pay for it and bet on six numbers. You’d get tiny wins for getting at least three of them right, and win the jackpot if you got all of them right. The jackpot can potentially reach millions, so that’s a great incentive.
Since online lottery games are inspired by sports betting, you can bet as much as you want and use any system you want.
No matter what lottery you pick, be it UK Lotto, Lotto Poland, Greece Kino 20/80, Italy Win for Life, Slovakia Keno 20/80, Italy SuperEnalotto 6/90, EuroMillions, MegaMillions, Powerball or others, you can have up to 15/16 numbers on a ticket and add up to 8 numbers in a combination.
As your winnings are calculated taking into account your actual odds of winning then 3/6, 4/6, 5/6 and 6/6 systems can bring you bigger winnings than you would get for 3, 4 or 5 numbers in an offline state lottery.
Remember that getting all 6 winning numbers won’t get you the jackpot, just a sum of money that’s proportional to your real probability of winning.
Also, some online casinos and bookmakers offer the chance of betting on lottery numbers, and other online casinos give you the possibility of buying lottery tickets online.
Top Online Lotteries
There are dozens and dozens of exceptional official lottery operators; thus, you can play many different lottery games. While each of them is great and has its benefits, we’ve narrowed things down to just the top lotteries from the UK, Europe and USA.
Play the world’s biggest lotteries if you want a chance at the biggest prizes and the most fun. Here are our top 5 lotteries from all over the world where you can buy lottery tickets online or bet online on a real money gambling app:
How to win the Lottery Online
So after you’ve decided you want to play online lotteries, your next thought is probably related to how to win when playing, which makes sense.
There are many lotto strategies available, some better, some weaker, some not even worth mentioning because they’re 100% clickbait.
While we will take our time to run you through the most common strategies used on the world’s biggest lotteries, you should know that lotteries are games of chance just like slots.
So no strategy is foolproof, nothing is certain, everything is based on luck, and consequently, anything can happen.
All strategies take into account several bets made over a long period and can bring you more chances of winning, theoretically.
Most strategies involve changing your bets depending on the previous results and combining numbers to get several variants. Remember that this is 101 gambler’s fallacy and that prior results don’t affect future outcomes.
You need to keep in mind that making a budget before you bet on lotteries is crucial. After that, make sure you pick licensed and regulated online casino sites or bookmakers to gamble at.
Then you can decide to take a look at the odds, your budget and the risks you’re willing to take and up the bet on every ticket to get a profit even when you sometimes lose, thus winning long term.
The Martingale strategy means you double the bet after each losing bet and usually works for bets on odds around 2.00.
The Fibonacci strategy works for higher odds of 3.00 – 4.00, and you bet according to the Fibonacci numbers where each number is equal to the sum of the previous two (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 etc.). You start with a bet of 1, and after every losing bet, you go to the next higher up number.
You can also bet according to a system based on mathematical probabilities and choose random numbers instead of your personal lucky ones following these rules:
- Pick both low and high numbers.
- Pick an equal number of odd and even numbers.
- Pick either hot numbers or cold numbers.
You can even check out lotto statistics and see which numbers come out the most or the least and build your strategy.
Online Lottery Numbers and Results
When you choose to bet on international lotteries online, you have the opportunity to bet daily on a lot of different lotteries. You can bet just a few minutes before the draw.
Each lottery has a number of draws per day (2 per day, one per hour, one every five minutes). After the draws, you do not necessarily need to check the results because the numbers you choose are automatically checked.
You will receive an email alert for any winning number combinations. So you will not miss any winnings even if you forget to check the lottery results.
You can watch the draw live at some online casino sites or at least be able to see the last drawn numbers just a few minutes after the draw ends.
Biggest Online Lottery Wins
The largest prize ever offered with an annual payment of $390 million was won in the US on the MegaMillions lottery. The largest jackpot in Europe was worth $183. 000.000,5. And it was won at EuroMillions for three winning tickets, two from France and one from Portugal.