How To Play Canada Lotto Max?

Hot news has emerged from Canada about their new Lotto Max draw. A unique new idea in lottery games that aims to ensure that big jackpot prizes get split between more winners.

The new game is a 7 balls from 49 draw to be held every Friday night. Tickets will be going on sale 19th September 2009 and the first draw will be on 25th September 2009.

You Have To Match 7 For The Jackpot

So you need to match 7 to win the jackpot. That immediately gives some pretty tough odds. But strangely for a lottery game you are forced to buy more than one entry! The ticket price is actually $5 but for this you get 3 picks.

The odds of one of your entries hitting the jackpot are pretty much 1 in 86 million for a 7 from 49 draw. But odds are brought down to at least 1 in 28.6 million as everyone has to buy 3 entries minimum.

Why The New Game?

Like me I'm sure you hate seeing enormous jackpots being won by just 1 or 2 people. Even if one winner turns out to be a lottery syndicate those crazy Powerball jackpots can still be way bigger than they ever need to be.

You just can't helping wishing 100 people had got a couple of million each. After all, what's 1 person going to do with 200 million that they can't do with 5 million..?

Apparently the Canadian Lottery bosses felt the same way.

How Does Lotto Max Create More Jackpot Winners?

When nobody wins the jackpot it rolls over to the next draw. Nothing new there. But here's the thing. When that rollover jackpot goes beyond $50 million some unique new rules come into play.

Enter MaxMillions!

For every $1 million above that magic $50 million, another draw will be made. That's a whole new draw with a new set of winning numbers.

If the rollover amount is $60 million, then yes, that means there will be another TEN sets of numbers drawn giving you a new chance of winning $1 million each time. Of course those extra draws will only be for the $1 million prizes - there won't be more smaller prizes as those will have been awarded for the first draw.

How Big A Deal Is This?

It's a good idea, and something I think lottery companies around the world will be watching very closely.

But I'm not blown away by the way Canada has actually designed this new lottery game.

Here's the problem.

The base jackpot will be $10 million. So for Lotto Max to reach the MaxMillions stage, you need that jackpot to roll over FIVE times in a row. That does mean most of the time Lotto Max will behave just like a normal lottery game. And jackpots of $50 million will still get paid to single winners.

But when it does reach the MaxMillions stage, then your odds of a big prize increase. By how much depends on exactly how many additional prizes there are and exactly how they make the additional draws.

Should I Play Lotto Max?

On a standard draw week there's seems little reason to play the new game. You have slightly better odds with the Canada Super 7, and TWICE the chances of winning if you stick with a Lotto 649 game.

But there may be a rollover point with the additional MaxMillions game when it is worth switching games to play in specific draws.