Filling a slip with birthdays keeps every number between 1 and 31 and leaves the twenty-eight numbers from 32 to 59 alone. That doesn't lower your odds of matching the draw, because all 45,057,474 combinations are equally likely. It does raise your odds of sharing a jackpot, since so many other players pick from the same narrow calendar range.
The game at a glance
6 of 59 + Bonus Number
Wed · Sat
United States
1 in 45,057,474
The same for every possible combination, including this one.
All divisions →
Bonus Number
A seventh ball, the Bonus Number, is drawn from the same drum right after the main six. You never pick it. Its only job is to decide the second prize, which goes to plays that matched five of the six main numbers plus that seventh ball.
18+
Must be 18+ to play New York Lotto.
New York Lotto, in brief
New York Lotto is the flagship draw game of the New York Lottery, the state agency that has funded public education in New York since 1967. A play asks for six numbers from 1 to 59. The pricing is unusual for a US jackpot game: the Lottery sells two plays for $1, so a single dollar buys two separate six-number lines rather than one, and a play slip holds up to $5 for ten games.
Draws are held Wednesday and Saturday nights at 8:15 PM, with terminals closing sales at 8:00. After the six main balls come out, a seventh, the Bonus Number, follows from the same drum. The jackpot takes 75% of the prize money set aside for each draw and rolls forward whenever nobody matches all six. Winners choose a 25-year annuity or the lump sum needed to fund it.
There is no multiplier add-on here and no second draw. What New York sells instead is repetition. Multi-Draw puts one set of six numbers into up to 26 consecutive draws on a single ticket, and Play It Again lets a retailer reprint an old ticket's numbers for the next draw, provided you bring it back within 30 days. Winning tickets stay claimable for one year from the draw date.
Prize tiers
6 matching numbersJackpot
The jackpot, three quarters of the draw's prize money, split evenly among winning plays and paid as a 25-year annuity or a lump sum
5 matching numbers + Bonus Number
The second prize, funded by a 7.25% slice of the prize money and shared among the plays that hit it
5 matching numbers
The third prize, a 5.5% slice, well below the Bonus Number tier above it
4 matching numbers
The fourth prize, 6.25% of the prize money divided among a far larger group of winners
3 matching numbers
The smallest tier, 6% of the prize money spread thin enough that it usually lands near the cost of a play
Where New York Lotto came from
Lottery money for schools since 1967
New York voters approved a state lottery in 1966, and the first drawing was held on 17 June 1967, making New York the second modern state lottery in the country after New Hampshire. The proceeds are tied to education by statute. For fiscal year 2025-26 the Lottery reported $3.6 billion in aid to education, handed to school districts on a formula weighted by district size and income level, so larger and poorer districts collect proportionately more.
America's first successful Lotto, 1978
The Lotto game itself arrived in 1978, run offline at first. It was the first Lotto game to succeed anywhere in the United States, and a version of that original game is still on sale. Computerization followed in 1980, which is what made a twice-weekly schedule and instant ticket printing workable. Everything New York added afterwards, from the daily Numbers game to Win 4, was built on that terminal network.
Where each sales dollar lands
Up to 40% of Lotto sales in a draw period is set aside as prize money. The jackpot claims 75% of that, roughly 30 cents in every sales dollar. The rest is carved into fixed slices: 7.25% to the second prize, 5.5% to the third, 6.25% to the fourth, 6% to the fifth. The advertised jackpot is an estimate built from projected sales and current US Treasury yields, not a pot already counted.
Picking numbers, honestly
The Bonus Number is not drawn from a second machine. It comes out of the same drum as the main six, from the 53 balls still in there, so it can never repeat a number already drawn. That is exactly why the second-prize odds work out to the jackpot odds divided by six: 1 in 7,509,579.
Two plays for a dollar buys you two tickets, not better odds on either one. Each six-number line stands on its own at 1 in 45,057,474, and a number that hasn't shown up in six months is no more likely to appear on Saturday than one that came out last week. The drum keeps no record.
New York Lotto — frequently asked
One dollar buys two plays, each a separate six-number line. A single play slip holds up to $5 for ten games.
No. You choose six numbers and nothing else. The Bonus Number is the seventh ball drawn, taken from the 53 left in the drum, and it matters only if you have already matched five of the six main numbers. Match those five plus the Bonus and you take the second prize.
Three. There are five prize tiers, and the lowest of them pays on 3 matching numbers. Across all five, roughly 1 in 92 plays wins something.
It projects ticket sales for the draw using recent trends, weather and competing jackpots, works out how much of that would flow into the jackpot pool, then multiplies the cash figure by a factor based on US government Treasury yields to get the annuity headline. Interest rates move, so the same cash pile can be advertised as a different annuity from one month to the next.
One year from the date of the draw. After that the ticket is dead, whatever it matched.