How to play
Big Ball Lotto draws from two separate drums. The main board holds the numbers 1 to 69, and five of them come out. A second, smaller board holds 1 to 26, and exactly one ball comes out of it: the big ball.
- Tap 5 numbers on the main board. The counter under the boards tells you how many you still need.
- Tap 1 number on the second board for your big ball. If you don’t want to choose, Quick pick fills both boards at random, and Clear wipes your selection.
- Choose a ticket price of 10, 50 or 100 credits and press Play.
The five main balls roll out, then the big ball, and your matches light up. The result is settled the moment you press Play; the drawing animation is just the reveal. Your numbers stay selected afterwards, so you can replay the same ticket by pressing Play again.
Because the big ball comes from its own drum, your big ball pick can be the same number as one of your main five. They’re matched independently: 12 on the main board only matches a main 12, and 12 as your big ball only matches a big-ball 12.
Pay table and odds
Prizes are multiples of the ticket price. “5 + 1” means five main numbers and the big ball.
| Match | Pays | Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 + 1 | 10,000,000 | 1 in 292,201,338 |
| 5 + 0 | 500,000 | 1 in 11,688,054 |
| 4 + 1 | 50,000 | 1 in 913,129 |
| 4 + 0 | 2,000 | 1 in 36,525 |
| 3 + 1 | 800 | 1 in 14,494 |
| 3 + 0 | 50 | 1 in 580 |
| 2 + 1 | 60 | 1 in 701 |
| 1 + 1 | 16 | 1 in 92 |
| 0 + 1 | 10 | 1 in 38 |
There’s no prize for one or two main numbers without the big ball. Put together, roughly one ticket in 25 wins something.
The odds come straight from counting. There are 11,238,513 ways to draw five of 69 numbers, and 26 possible big balls, which is where the 292 million for the top prize comes from.
Where the return comes from
Adding up every row of the table gives an exact long-run return of 84.84% of what you spend, so the house keeps about 15 credits of every 100. That’s a steeper cut than the table games in the casino, and it’s typical of draw games, where much of the payout is tied up in prizes almost nobody will see.
The split is worth knowing:
- The three small big-ball prizes (0 + 1, 1 + 1 and 2 + 1) account for about 52 of the 84.84 points. That’s most of what actually comes back to a regular player.
- The 10,000,000× jackpot accounts for only about 3.4 points. You’d need hundreds of millions of tickets to expect to see it once.
- The middle tiers, from 3 + 0 up to 5 + 0, share the rest.
In practice, a session of Big Ball Lotto is a slow drip of 10× and 16× wins from the big ball, a 50× or 60× now and then, and long gaps in between. A ticket price of 10 lasts much longer than 100 with the same odds.
Strategy
No pick is better than another. Every set of five numbers and every big ball is equally likely on every draw, and nothing from past draws carries over. “Hot” and “cold” numbers don’t exist here.
What you can control is the ticket price and how long your credits last. Since the return is the same at every price, playing small just stretches the session.
If you’d like a game with fewer numbers and more frequent mid-sized wins, Lotto 5+2 uses a 1 to 50 board with two star numbers from 1 to 12 and thirteen prize tiers. For the classic single-drum format, try Number Draw 6/49.
If you enjoy Big Ball Lotto, try Big O or 30-Ball Speed Bingo next.
