Broaden Your Horizon with a Lottery Glossary

A small lottery glossary to make you feel more confident

You don’t need any previous experience or training to play the lottery and have exactly the same chances as your peers. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to get familiar with a couple of lottery terms, at least the most common ones that we chose to include in this lottery glossary. Going over the list below will help you broaden your horizon with minimal effort and gain a better understanding of what these terms mean.

Annuity – the amount of money that a lottery winner chooses to receive, over the course of years.

Antipode Draw – a draw when the winning numbers make up a strange combination, of consecutive numbers or ones that are either very low or extremely high.

Bonus Ball – some lotteries such as the Powerball or Euromillions have two distinct number pools, and in order to win the jackpot you need to match all the numbers extracted from both pools. The bonus ball is the one extracted last from the special pool that contains fewer numbers, and it is used to boost prizes.

Boxed Bets – when playing Pick 3 or Pick 4 games, players can choose to bet on the straight number, for instance 123 / 1234 or settle for boxed bets. The latter represent any combination of the three or four digits, which means that they can win lower amounts with numbers such as 123,132, 231,213, 312 or 321.

Hot and Cold Numbers – hot numbers are the ones that are extracted more often, while cold numbers are those who have a lower frequency.

Free Lotto – these are the games that are played mostly online and are also known as sweepstakes, as players can register for free and still win prizes.

Instant Games – these are the scratch-card types of games where players find out immediately if they won, without having to wait for a draw.

Jackpot – the top payout in any lottery goes by this name and in games such as Powerball, Mega Millions, or Euromillions it can exceed hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lottery Draws – the events during which the numbers are extracted and winners are determined, with most of them being presented live on television.

Lottery Wheels – systems that indicate the manner in which more or less lottery numbers should be combined, so in case they are drawn the player wins the highest possible amount.

Lucky Dip – this is also known as the quick pick, and means that lottery players let the software select the numbers on their behalf, to speed things up and not get attached to certain numbers.

Lottery Odds – the chances of a specific event to occur, more precisely the chances to win a prize

Overdue Numbers – these are the numbers that haven’t been extracted recently, which lottery players consider to be due to hit in the foreseeable future.

Rollover – when nobody wins the jackpot, it is rolled over to the next draw, which means that the top payout is dramatically increased

Syndicates – a group of lottery players pulling their money together to increase their chances to win by purchasing more tickets or adding more numbers.