Wednesday Lotto

Sometimes, you come across a lotto story which is fairly unique and interesting. That’s certainly the case with the Australian Wednesday Lotto game. The Wednesday lotto game, also known in Australia simple as “Lotto” is one of a great many lottery games offered by the Australia Tatersalls Company – the organization which supervises all other Australian lottery associations. It is neither the most popular game nor the one with the biggest jackpot, but it’s still an interesting story and one that we really loved.

Originally Offered Only in New South Wales

You see, the Australian Wednesday Lotto game started out being called the NSW Lottery and it was originally operated by the New South Wales lottery commission, exclusively for that Australian state. However, Australians all over the country began to take an interest in the NSW Lottery and before long, the game was made into a national one, offered by the Tatersalls Company and now simply referred to either as Lotto or as Wednesday Lotto (to differentiate it from the other lottery games offered by the company, including the Saturday Lotto, Oz Lotto and Powerball games).

Game Type

Like most other lottery games, the Australian Wednesday Lotto game is a traditional style lottery game which allows you to win the jackpot if you match all six numbers from a pool of 45 possible choices. However, like some modern games, including the Powerball game which Australia made famous, they also have an additional drawing of two supplemental numbers which are used to determine winners of the secondary level prizes in the game.

How to Play

Now that the NSW Lottery has been transformed into the Wednesday Lotto game, it is available from lottery sales clerks all over Australia. However, even if you aren’t in Australia, you can still play the game since the tickets are also sold by a number of online lottery outlets alongside Australia’s other popular lottery games. As with virtually all modern lottery games, there is a “SlikPik” feature available which allows you to have the computer choose the numbers for you, or you can simply pick the numbers you want on your own.

Odds of Winning

The odds of winning the Australian Wednesday Lotto game are actually pretty good. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 8,145,000. For the second prize, the odds are 1 in 607,000. Third prize odds for the Australian Wednesday Lotto game are 1 in 37,000 and fourth place odds are 1 733. There is also a fifth place prize which is won by 1 out of every 211 people who play the Wednesday Lotto game.

The record Wednesday Lotto jackpot was won in November, 1996 and paid out a total of AUS$15,000,000.