A box does give you better odds than a straight. It also pays proportionally less, and that is the whole trade. Six ways to win at $80 and one way to win at $500 are the same 48 to 50 cents back on the dollar. No bet type on the chart returns more than any other, which is the honest reason we do not recommend one.
The game at a glance
3 digits, 0–9 each
1,000 possible results, repeats allowed, order counts.
2 a day
Every day. Midday 1:30 p.m. ET · Evening 9:45 p.m. ET — 14 draws a week.
1 in 1,000
The same for every one of the possible results, including the one you picked.
Fixed amounts
Printed in advance and paid in full to every winner. $500 for a $1 straight.
$0.50 or $1 a play
Operated by the Florida Lottery.
18+
Must be 18+ to buy a Florida Lottery ticket.
Pick 3, in brief
Pick 3 is the plainest game a state lottery sells. Three digits are drawn, one for each position, and every digit runs 0 through 9. That makes 1,000 possible results, from 000 to 999, each of them equally likely. A dozen states run a game under this exact name; the rules, prizes and odds on this page are the Florida Lottery's, because a page that tried to describe every state at once would end up describing none of them.
The draw repeats. Unlike a jackpot game, where the interesting decision is which numbers to mark, a digit game gives you almost nothing to decide there. A three-digit number is a three-digit number. What you actually choose is the bet type: whether the digits have to land in the order you wrote them, whether any order will do, whether you only care about the first two. Each choice buys a different slice of those 1,000 outcomes at a different price.
Florida draws Pick 3 twice a day, seven days a week, and the prizes are set amounts rather than a share of a pool. Nothing rolls over, nothing climbs, and a $1 straight pays $500 whether one person or four thousand people hold the winning number. The state protects itself with a liability cap instead: if a single number is bought heavily enough in one drawing, sales of that number are cut off.
Every bet type, with the odds
| Bet type | Winning arrangements | Odds | Share of draws | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StraightThe three digits have to come out in the order you wrote them. One outcome out of a thousand pays. | 1 | 1 in 1,000 | $500 on a $1 play, $250 on 50¢ | |
| Box (6-way)Three different digits, any order. Six of the thousand outcomes are arrangements of your number, so a box costs you nothing extra and wins six times as often as a straight — for a much smaller prize. | 6 | 1 in 167 | $80 on a $1 play, $40 on 50¢ | |
| Box (3-way)A number with one repeated digit has only three arrangements instead of six, so the same box bet wins half as often and pays twice as much. | 3 | 1 in 333 | $160 on a $1 play, $80 on 50¢ | |
| Straight/Box (6-way)One dollar split into a 50¢ straight and a 50¢ box. Any arrangement pays the box half; the exact order pays both halves together. | 6 | 1 in 167 | $290 in exact order (1 in 1,000), $40 in any other order | |
| Straight/Box (3-way)The same split wager on a number with a repeated digit. Three arrangements, so both sides pay more. | 3 | 1 in 333 | $330 in exact order (1 in 1,000), $80 in any other order | |
| Combo (6-way)Six separate straight bets on one ticket, one for each arrangement of your digits. You win the full straight prize in any order, and you pay six times the stake for it. | 6 | 1 in 167 | $500 on a $6 play, $250 on $3 | |
| Combo (3-way)The same idea on a number with a repeated digit: three straight bets, three arrangements covered. | 3 | 1 in 333 | $500 on a $3 play, $250 on $1.50 | |
| Front PairOnly the first two digits have to match, in order. The third can be anything, which leaves ten winning outcomes. | 10 | 1 in 100 | $50 on a $1 play, $25 on 50¢ | |
| Back PairThe mirror image: the last two digits in order, the first one free. | 10 | 1 in 100 | $50 on a $1 play, $25 on 50¢ |
The FIREBALL add-on
A fourth digit drawn after the three winning ones. For an extra $1, which doubles the ticket price, you may substitute FIREBALL for any one of the three drawn digits to make a winning combination. The prizes on the FIREBALL side are smaller than the base ones, and the extra dollar is what buys them.
Where Pick 3 came from
The street game came first
Every Pick 3 in the country is a licensed version of an older game. In American cities from the late nineteenth century onward, the numbers game took small bets on a three-digit figure, and the whole business depended on finding a daily number that nobody involved could fix. Operators used the last three digits of the day's betting handle at a named racetrack, or a published bank clearing-house balance. The player bet pennies on a three-digit combination and, if it came up, was paid a few hundred to one.
Straight, box and pair are inherited words
The vocabulary on a modern play slip is older than the lottery that prints it. Betting a number in exact order was a straight; taking every arrangement of the same three digits was a box; backing only the first or last two digits was a pair. State lotteries adopted the game in the 1970s and kept the language intact, because the players they were competing with already knew it.
What the state changed
Two things. The payout became transparent, and the draw became auditable. A street operator paid roughly 500 or 600 to one on a straight and could adjust it; a state prints the number on a chart. The other change was volume. Once the terminal network could handle it, a single daily draw became midday and evening, and in a few states more than that.
The add-on era
The newest layer is the optional extra number. Florida's FIREBALL, and equivalents in other states under other names, draws one more digit and lets it stand in for any of the three. It doubles the price of the ticket and creates a second, shorter-odds, smaller-prize set of ways to win. It is a separate bet bolted onto the first, not an improvement to it.
Playing digits, honestly
Numbers do not become due. Each drawing puts all ten digits back in play for each position, so 777 is exactly as likely tonight as it was the night it last came up, and exactly as likely as 481.
Digit games are often sold as the smart player's lottery because the odds are so much shorter than a jackpot draw. The short odds are real: 1 in 1,000 against 1 in 292 million is not a small difference. The payout percentage is what matters, and on a Pick 3 straight it is about 50%, which is worse than most jackpot games, not better.
There is no pattern in the digits to find. Every published frequency chart, including the operator's own, is a record of what happened, not a constraint on what happens next.
Pick 3 — frequently asked
A straight bet is 1 in 1,000, because the draw has exactly a thousand outcomes and one of them is your number in your order. A 6-way box is 1 in 167, since six of those thousand outcomes are rearrangements of the same three digits. A front or back pair is 1 in 100.
It wins more often and pays less. On Florida's chart a $1 straight returns $500 at 1 in 1,000 and a $1 six-way box returns $80 at 1 in 167. Multiply each prize by its chance and both come out around 48 to 50 cents per dollar staked. Box if you would rather win small and often; the long-run cost is the same.
The winning numbers are identical; the price and prize are not. A box is one cheap bet that pays a reduced amount in any order. A combo is every straight arrangement bought separately, so a six-way combo costs six times as much and pays the full straight prize.
Yes. Each position is drawn independently from its own set of ten, so 4-4-4 and 2-7-7 are as possible as 3-8-1. That is also why boxes are graded by pattern: a number with a repeated digit has fewer arrangements, so it wins less often and pays more.
Florida's. Every prize and play type above is from the Florida Lottery's published chart. Other states run a game with the same name and the same 1,000 outcomes, but the wager sizes, prizes and available bet types differ, so check your own operator's chart before you play.