You don’t need a maths degree to understand a lottery. You need three ideas: how many possible tickets there are, how many of them win, and how much you get back on average. Here they are.
1. Counting combinations
In a “pick 6 from 49” game, order doesn’t matter, so the number of different tickets is 49 × 48 × 47 × 46 × 45 × 44 divided by 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1. That works out to 13,983,816. One ticket has exactly one chance in that many of matching all six.
| Format | Different tickets (jackpot odds 1 in…) |
|---|---|
| 6 from 45 | 8,145,060 |
| 6 from 49 | 13,983,816 |
| 5 from 50 + 2 from 12 | 139,838,160 |
| 5 from 69 + 1 from 26 | 292,201,338 |
Every ticket in the same game has identical odds. “1-2-3-4-5-6” is exactly as likely as any other combination.
2. Raffle-style lotteries work differently
Kerala and most Indian state lotteries are raffles: every ticket carries a unique series and number, and the draw picks winning tickets from those printed. Your chance of the first prize is simply the tickets you hold divided by the tickets in the draw.
A real-world sense of scale: the 2025 Thiruvonam bumper reportedly turned over about ₹375 crore. At ₹500 a ticket that is roughly 75 lakh tickets, so with one first prize each ticket had about a 1 in 75,00,000 chance. Buy one ticket every single day and you would expect to wait more than 20,000 years for that win.
3. Expected value: what a ticket is really worth
Add up every prize multiplied by its chance, and you get the average amount a ticket pays back. Lotteries are designed so that this is less than the ticket price — the difference funds the state, agents and running costs. After 30%+ tax on bigger prizes, the average return falls further.
That doesn’t make buying a ticket wrong; it makes it entertainment with a known cost, not an investment. Our expected value tool works it out for any prize structure.
Why “due” and “hot” numbers aren’t real
The gambler’s fallacy is the belief that a random event becomes more likely if it hasn’t happened for a while. Draw machines and pots have no memory. A number missing for 50 draws has the same chance in the next one as a number drawn last night. “Hot” streaks are the same illusion in reverse: random sequences naturally contain runs, and those runs predict nothing.
Do systems and wheels work?
A wheel is a way of buying many combinations of a larger set of numbers. It guarantees a small prize if enough of your chosen numbers are drawn, but it does not change the odds of any single combination, and it multiplies your spending. In matka, “systems” and “fix numbers” are sold by people who profit from your belief in them.
Myths and facts
| Myth | Fact |
|---|---|
| Some shops sell more winners, so their tickets are luckier. | Busy shops sell more tickets, so they sell more winners. Your ticket’s odds are unchanged. |
| Birthdays are lucky numbers. | No luckier, and popular picks mean more people share a prize. |
| I nearly won — I matched five. | A near miss is a loss that feels like progress. |
| A result can be predicted from charts. | Charts describe the past. Random draws ignore them. |
| Playing more often improves my chances. | Each ticket has the same tiny chance; spending grows faster than hope. |
Watch
Sources
- Lottery odds formula, Omni Calculator
- Thiruvonam bumper turnover and tax, Kerala Kaumudi