What Are the Odds of Winning the Lottery? A 7-State Mega-Guide

Written by Max Watt

August 4, 2026

Massachusetts | Arkansas | Ohio | New Jersey | Arizona | Colorado | New York

Every week, tens of millions of Americans buy a lottery ticket and let themselves imagine, just for a second, what life would look like with an extra few hundred million dollars in the bank. The jackpot billboards are designed to make that daydream feel close. The math tells a very different story.

This guide pulls together everything you need to know about lottery odds across seven states — Massachusetts, Arkansas, Ohio, New Jersey, Arizona, Colorado, New York, — so you can see, side by side, which games actually give you a reasonable shot at winning something, which ones are basically a $2 excuse to daydream, and how the numbers actually work under the hood.

Get more expert insights from Jackpot.com.

1. The Multi-State Giants: Powerball & Mega Millions

No matter which of these seven states you're in, the two national games behave almost identically, because they're the same game everywhere.

A few things worth knowing:

• Mega Millions got a 2025 makeover. The Mega Ball pool shrank from 25 numbers to 24, nudging jackpot odds from 1 in 302,575,350 to 1 in 290,472,336, and the starting jackpot jumped from $20 million to $50 million. The trade-off: the ticket price rose from $2 to $5, and every non-jackpot prize now comes with an automatic 2x–10x multiplier — reportedly producing about 343% more in secondary-prize payouts than the old format.
• Powerball’s math spelled out: odds are calculated as C(69,5) × 26 — the number of ways to choose 5 numbers from 69, times 26 possible red balls — which works out to 11,238,513 × 26 = 292,201,338 combinations. One of them wins.
• Arkansas has hit it. On December 24, 2025, a ticket sold at a gas station in Cabot, AR won a $1.817 billion Powerball jackpot — the second-largest U.S. lottery prize ever — on numbers 4, 25, 31, 52, 59, Powerball 19. It was only the second Powerball jackpot won in Arkansas since the state lottery launched in 2009 (the first was in 2010).
• New Jersey's biggest moment: a single Neptune Township ticket won a $1.13 billion Mega Millions jackpot in March 2024 — the largest prize in NJ history and the fifth-largest Mega Millions jackpot ever.

Jackpot odds don't move no matter what state you buy in, how big the jackpot has grown, or how many other people are playing that week. A $40 million Powerball and a $2 billion Powerball both come with the exact same 1-in-292,201,338 shot.

2. Millionaire for Life: The New "Paycheck for Life" Game

Lucky for Life and Cash4Life — the two games that used to anchor this section — no longer exist. Both held their final drawings on February 21, 2026, retired by a consortium vote of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which merged them into one bigger successor. That game, Millionaire for Life, launched with its first drawing on February 22, 2026, and is now the "lifetime prize" game available in all seven states covered by this guide.

A few things worth knowing about the switch:

• The jackpot got a lot bigger, and so did the price. Millionaire for Life pays $1 million a year for life at the top tier — roughly 3x the old ~$365,000/year top prize from Lucky for Life — but the ticket price rose from $2 to $5 to fund it.
• It's genuinely wider reaching. Millionaire for Life launched in 31 jurisdictions (Cash4Life covered NJ and NY; Lucky for Life covered roughly 22 states plus DC), so players in Massachusetts, Arkansas, Ohio, Colorado, New Jersey, and New York can all now play the same unified game.
• The overall odds barely moved. At roughly 1 in 8.46 for any prize, Millionaire for Life is essentially as easy to win something on as its two predecessors were — it just costs more to find out.
• The first jackpot has already been won. An Ohio Lottery player in Cleveland claimed the very first Millionaire for Life grand prize in May 2026, beating the 1-in-22.9-million odds.

The bottom line for this guide's rankings: swap "Lucky for Life" and "Cash4Life" out of your mental math and slot in Millionaire for Life instead — same ballpark odds, bigger prize, higher buy-in.

3. State-Exclusive Draw Games, Ranked by Overall Odds

This is where the real differences show up. Every one of these seven states runs its own in-house jackpot game with dramatically better odds than Powerball or Mega Millions — just with a much smaller prize.

Colorado's Cash 5 is the standout of this whole guide — with 1-in-6.2 odds of winning anything, roughly one in every six tickets pays out something. That's a dramatically better hit rate than any jackpot-style game from any of the seven states.

Note the pattern: smaller number pools mean smaller jackpots but far friendlier odds. Arkansas LOTTO (40-number pool) and Colorado Lotto+ (6-from-a-smaller-pool structure) both land at the same 1-in-3,838,380 jackpot odds — about 76 times better than Powerball — while still offering six- and seven-figure jackpots.

4. Daily Numbers Games (Pick 3 / Pick 4 / The Numbers Game)

Every state on this list runs some version of a daily digit game. The odds are identical everywhere because the math is identical — it's the same combinatorics regardless of state branding.

These games cost as little as 50¢, draw once or twice a day, and — unlike jackpot games — let you calculate your exact odds down to the bet type. Ohio and Massachusetts also run Keno, with notably generous 1-in-3.53 odds of winning any prize, and a Pick 5 option.

5. Scratch-Offs: Best Overall Odds, Smallest Real Prizes

Scratch tickets post the most attractive-looking numbers of any game type — and the most misleading, if you don't read them carefully.

The catch, across every state:

"Overall Odds" printed on the ticket includes breakeven prizes — tickets that just refund your original $1, $5, or $20. "Adjusted Odds" (odds of winning more than you paid) are always worse, sometimes dramatically so. On Arizona's Set for Life, for instance, that eye-catching 1-in-2.18 overall figure drops to roughly 1-in-240,000 for a top-tier prize. New Jersey notes the same split by price tier: $20–30 tickets typically return 70–85¢ per dollar spent, while $1–5 tickets often return only 50–60¢.

Colorado and Arizona both flag a research angle worth knowing. Lottery websites publish how many top prizes remain unclaimed on each active scratch game, so you can at least avoid buying into a game that's already given away its big prizes.

6. The Math Behind the Numbers

Every jackpot-style game boils down to combinatorics — counting how many possible combinations exist, since exactly one of them wins.

Powerball's formula: C(69,5) × 26 = (69! / (5! × 64!)) × 26 = 11,238,513 × 26 = 292,201,338

Megabucks/Classic Lotto-style formula (6 from 49): C(49,6) = 13,983,816

The jump between these is the key intuition: going from selecting 5 numbers to 6 numbers out of a similar-sized pool doesn't add a little difficulty, it multiplies the combination count by roughly 7x. Every extra number you have to match makes the odds exponentially worse — which is exactly why Powerball and Mega Millions, both of which require matching 5 numbers plus a bonus ball from a second pool, land in the hundreds of millions, while single-pool games like Colorado Lotto+ or Arkansas LOTTO stay in the single-digit millions.

Non-jackpot tiers matter more than they get credit for. In Megabucks, for example:

• Match 5 of 6 → 1 in 30,961 → $5,000
• Match 4 of 6 → 1 in 669 → $200
• Match 3 of 6 → 1 in 42 → $4

Lottery commissions design games this way on purpose: astronomically unlikely top prizes, paired with much more common small ones, so players experience occasional real wins while the jackpot odds stay essentially untouchable.

7. Everyday Odds for Comparison

Numbers this large stop meaning anything without a reference point. A few comparisons pulled for this guide:

• Struck by lightning in your lifetime: 1 in 15,300 (per Arkansas) or 1 in 1,222,000 (per New Jersey, likely a single year vs. lifetime figure)
• Becoming U.S. president: 1 in 32.6 million
• Amateur golfer scoring a hole-in-one: 1 in 12,500

By any of these yardsticks, you are meaningfully more likely to end up in the White House than to win a Powerball jackpot with one ticket.

8. Myths, Debunked (Consistently, Across All Seven States)

Every single one of these guides converges on the same set of corrections, because the underlying math never changes:

• "Hot" and "cold" numbers mean nothing. Each drawing is a fully independent event. A number that hasn't hit in months is exactly as likely to appear next time as one that hit last week. This is the textbook gambler's fallacy.
• All combinations are equally likely. 1-2-3-4-5-6 has exactly the same odds as any other six-number combination — it just feels less random.
• Quick Pick vs. manual selection makes zero difference. Both use the same underlying random process.
• Jackpot size doesn't change your odds. A $40 million and a $2 billion Powerball jackpot both carry identical 1-in-292,201,338 odds.
• Buying tickets in a "lucky" store doesn't help. Every ticket has identical odds regardless of where it's purchased; high-population areas just sell more tickets, so they produce more winners by volume, not by luck.
• The one strategy that's actually real: buying more tickets with different combinations increases your odds in direct proportion to tickets bought. Five different tickets = five times the odds of one ticket. The catch, as Arkansas's guide bluntly puts it: five tickets take you from a 1-in-292-million shot to a 1-in-58.4-million shot — an improvement that's still, for all practical purposes, zero.
• Smart number selection can reduce prize-splitting, even if it can't improve odds. Because so many players pick numbers 1–31 (birthdays and anniversaries), choosing higher numbers — and avoiding patterns like 1-2-3-4-5-6, evenly spaced multiples, or the famously overplayed 7-14-21-28-35 — won't make you more likely to win, but it can mean a bigger, unshared payout if you do.

9. Taxes: What You'd Actually Take Home

This is the part the jackpot billboards never mention. Two states in this guide give a detailed breakdown:

New Jersey

• State tax: 5% (prizes $10,001–$500,000) or 8% (over $500,000)
• Federal withholding: 24% automatic, more may be owed at filing
• Combined burden on major jackpots: can exceed 40%
• Lump-sum payout is typically only 50–60% of the advertised jackpot — NJ's real-world example: a $1.13 billion advertised jackpot had a cash value of $537.5 million, before taxes

Colorado

• Federal withholding: 24%
• State gambling tax: 4%
• Combined immediate withholding: 28%
• Example: a $10 million jackpot, taken as roughly $5 million cash, loses about $1.4 million to withholding alone

New York (most detailed breakdown of the group)

• Federal: 24% (up to 37% depending on total income)
• State: 10.9%
• NYC residents: +3.876%
• Yonkers residents: +1.82575%
• A NYC resident could see nearly 39% withheld immediately — meaning a $1 billion advertised jackpot might deliver only $450–520 million after taxes and the lump-sum haircut combined.

The takeaway holds across every state: the number on the billboard and the number that lands in your bank account are very different figures.

10. Where the Money Actually Goes

Whatever you think of the odds, lottery proceeds fund real public programs in every one of these states:

• New York: ~$89 billion contributed to public education since 1967; $3.6 billion in FY2024–25 alone, benefiting 700+ school districts. New York's lottery is the largest in the country, at $10.6 billion in annual sales.
• Ohio: Over $34 billion transferred to education since 1974; $1.4 billion in FY2025.
• New Jersey: $34.7 billion contributed to state programs since 1970; $1.08 billion to the public pension system in FY2025 alone. By law, ~50% of revenue returns to players as prizes, and at least 30% goes to state institutions and education.
• Colorado: $4.2 billion to outdoor recreation and education since 1983; roughly 65¢ of every dollar goes to prizes, 22¢ to parks/schools, 7–8¢ to retailers.
• Arkansas: $1.5 billion raised for scholarships since 2009, funding over 822,000 scholarships; more than 92¢ of every revenue dollar goes to prizes, scholarships, and operations combined.
• Arizona: $287 million generated in FY2021 alone, spread across 17 programs — from higher education to internet-crimes-against-children enforcement to homeless services. About 30% of every Powerball ticket sold in Arizona stays in-state.

11. Responsible Play

Every one of these seven guides lands on the same core advice, so it's worth stating once, clearly, instead of seven times:

• Set a fixed budget before you buy and treat it like any other entertainment expense — a movie ticket, not an investment.
• Only spend disposable income — never money earmarked for bills or essentials.
• Don't chase losses. Increasing spending after a losing streak doesn't change the math; it just increases the loss.
• Avoid playing during emotional stress, and recognize that no system, strategy, or "due" number changes your odds.
• If it stops feeling like entertainment, get support. Resources mentioned across these guides include the national 1-800-GAMBLER helpline (promoted by NJ and referenced by CO's Problem Gambling Coalition, available 24/7), the NY Council on Problem Gambling and NYS OASAS helpline (1-877-847-4673), and the National Council on Problem Gambling, which estimates nearly 20 million American adults experience at least one problem-gambling behavior in a given year.

The Bottom Line

Line all seven states up side by side and the pattern is unmistakable. The bigger the jackpot, the worse the odds, every single time, without exception. Powerball and Mega Millions offer the dream but sit at roughly 1-in-290-million; state-exclusive games like Colorado's Cash 5 (1 in 6.2) or Arkansas's Natural State Jackpot (1 in 9) trade jackpot size for a realistic shot at winning something far more often.

None of these games have positive expected value — that's true in every state, for every game, no exceptions. But if you're going to play anyway, the math is pretty clear about where your dollar goes furthest: skip the astronomical multi-state jackpots and put it toward the in-state daily or five-number games instead, set a budget you're fully prepared to lose, and treat the whole thing as the price of a daydream rather than a financial plan.