Sticking to numbers 1 through 31 doesn't hurt your chance of winning, since every combination is equally likely. It does hurt your payout if you win, because birthday and calendar picks cluster on the low third of a 90-number wheel, so those combinations get shared by more tickets when they hit.
The game at a glance
6 of 90
Tue · Thu · Fri · Sat
Italy
1 in 622,614,630
The same for every possible combination, including this one.
Jolly
A Jolly number is drawn from the 84 balls left over after the main six. Players never pick it; it only comes into play for tickets that matched five main numbers, upgrading them to the 5+1 prize tier.
18+
Must be 18+ to play SuperEnalotto.
SuperEnalotto, in brief
SuperEnalotto is Italy's national jackpot game, operated by Sisal under state license. A ticket asks a player to pick six numbers from 1 to 90, and matching all six wins the jackpot. That 90-number pool is what makes the game notorious: at 1 in 622,614,630, the jackpot odds are more than twice as long as Powerball's, even though you're only picking six numbers.
Draws take place four evenings a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. There is no jackpot cap and no forced rolldown, so when nobody matches six the top prize simply carries over to the next draw. Combined with the brutal odds, that means the jackpot routinely rolls for months and regularly climbs past the €100 million mark before someone finally takes it down.
Two extra numbers appear on the draw board. The Jolly is drawn automatically from the remaining 84 balls and feeds a single prize tier for near-miss tickets. The SuperStar is an optional paid add-on: players who buy it get an extra number drawn from its own separate 1-to-90 machine, which boosts prizes in most tiers when matched.
Prize tiers
6 numbersJackpot
The jackpot, uncapped and split evenly among all winning tickets
5 numbers + Jolly
A share of the second-tier pool, far below the jackpot but often a life-changing sum after a long rollover run
5 numbers
A share of the third-tier pool, typically tens of thousands of euros
4 numbers
A modest pool-based prize, usually a few hundred euros
3 numbers
A small prize, roughly the price of a night out
2 numbers
The minimum prize, a few euros
Where SuperEnalotto came from
From Enalotto to SuperEnalotto
The game descends from Enalotto, a pools-style lottery that ran in Italy from the 1950s. In December 1997 Sisal relaunched it as SuperEnalotto with the six-from-90 format that still defines the game today. For its first decade the winning numbers weren't even drawn independently: they were borrowed from the first balls of the regional Lotto draws held in cities like Bari, Florence, Milan, Naples, Palermo, and Rome.
The 2009 overhaul
In July 2009 the game cut its ties to the regional Lotto draws and switched to its own dedicated drawing, with all six numbers plus the Jolly pulled from a single machine. The same overhaul introduced instant-win extras and set the structure that later additions, including the fourth weekly draw on Fridays, have built on.
Why the jackpots run so long
SuperEnalotto has no cap on how large the jackpot can grow and no rolldown rule pushing an unwon top prize into lower tiers. Rollover streaks lasting more than a year are part of the game's identity, and its longest runs have produced some of the largest single-draw prizes ever paid in Europe.
Picking numbers, honestly
Italy has a long tradition of chasing numeri ritardatari, the overdue numbers that haven't appeared in months. The machine has no memory. A number absent for a hundred draws carries exactly the same odds in tonight's draw as one that came up last time.
Until July 2009, SuperEnalotto didn't hold its own draw at all. The winning numbers were taken from the first balls of six regional Lotto draws held in different Italian cities, which is why older results look nothing like the single-machine draw used today.
SuperEnalotto — frequently asked
No. The Jolly is drawn automatically from the 84 balls remaining after the main six. It affects exactly one prize tier: tickets that matched five main numbers and also match the Jolly move up to the 5+1 tier.
An optional add-on bought for a small extra fee per line. It's drawn from a separate machine with its own 1-to-90 pool, so it can duplicate a main number. Matching it boosts prizes in most tiers and adds a few prize categories of its own.
The odds of matching six from 90 are 1 in 622,614,630, and there is no cap or rolldown on the top prize. Long stretches with no winner are normal, and the jackpot keeps compounding until someone hits it, regularly passing €100 million.
Four times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Draws that fall on Italian public holidays are moved to another day.
Matching two main numbers wins the minimum prize of a few euros. From there the tiers step up through three, four, five, five plus the Jolly, and finally all six for the jackpot.