Playing birthdays doesn't hurt your chance of winning, but it does hurt your payout. Dates only cover 1 through 31, so the sixteen numbers from 32 to 47 appear far less often on tickets. A jackpot built from calendar numbers is much more likely to be split several ways.
The game at a glance
7 of 47 + 3 supplementaries
Tue
Australia
1 in 62,891,499
The same for every possible combination, including this one.
Supplementary
After the seven winning numbers, three supplementary numbers are drawn from the same barrel. Players don't pick them; they only come into play for divisions 2, 4, and 7.
18+
Must be 18+ to play Oz Lotto.
Oz Lotto, in brief
Oz Lotto is Australia's Tuesday night lottery draw, sold nationwide through The Lott outlets in most states and Lotterywest in Western Australia. A standard entry asks a player to pick seven numbers from 1 to 47. There is no separate bonus ball to choose; everything a player marks comes from the one pool.
On draw night, ten balls come out of a single barrel. The first seven are the winning numbers. The last three are the supplementary numbers, which nobody picks but which decide the second, fourth, and seventh prize divisions. Matching all seven winning numbers takes Division 1, at odds of 1 in 62,891,499 per game line.
When nobody wins Division 1, the jackpot rolls over to the following Tuesday and keeps building until someone matches all seven. Those rollovers are what push Oz Lotto jackpots into the tens of millions.
Prize tiers
7 winning numbersJackpot
The Division 1 jackpot, shared equally among all winning game lines
6 winning numbers + 1 supplementary
A large five- to six-figure share of the Division 2 pool
6 winning numbers
A mid four-figure prize in a typical draw
5 winning numbers + 1 supplementary
A few hundred dollars
5 winning numbers
A modest cash prize, usually well under a hundred dollars
4 winning numbers
A small cash prize
3 winning numbers + 1 supplementary
The minimum division, roughly the cost of a few games
Where Oz Lotto came from
Australia's first national game
Oz Lotto launched on 26 February 1994 as the first lottery game drawn across the whole of Australia, at a time when every other lotto was run state by state. It started as a straightforward 6-from-45 game, the same shape as Saturday Lotto but with its own Tuesday slot.
The Super 7's era
From 18 October 2005 a seventh ball was added, stretching the Division 1 odds and letting jackpots climb higher before being struck. Some states rebranded around the change: Tatts jurisdictions sold it as Super 7's Oz Lotto and Queensland as Oz 7 Lotto, before the game returned to the single national Oz Lotto name in 2012.
The 2022 matrix
In May 2022 the pool widened from 45 to 47 numbers and a third supplementary ball joined the draw. The change lengthened the jackpot odds to the current 1 in 62,891,499 but improved the overall chance of winning something, mainly through the reshaped lower divisions.
Picking numbers, honestly
A number that hasn't been drawn for months is not due. Every Tuesday the barrel is loaded with the same 47 balls and each has an identical chance, whatever happened in previous draws.
Unlike games with a separate bonus machine, Oz Lotto's supplementaries come out of the same barrel as the winning numbers, as balls eight, nine, and ten of the draw. That means a supplementary can never duplicate a winning number in the same draw.
Oz Lotto — frequently asked
The lowest division is 3 winning numbers plus 1 supplementary. Three winning numbers on their own win nothing; four winning numbers is the smallest match that pays without any supplementary.
No. You only ever pick seven numbers. The three supplementaries are simply the eighth, ninth, and tenth balls out of the barrel, and they're checked against your same seven picks in divisions 2, 4, and 7.
No. It launched in 1994 as a 6-from-45 game, added a seventh ball in October 2005, and moved to the current 7-from-47 format with three supplementaries in May 2022.
The jackpot rolls over to the next Tuesday's draw and keeps growing until at least one game line matches all seven winning numbers.
Once a week, on Tuesday night. It has held that slot since the game began, which is why Australians still talk about the Tuesday lotto.