Millions of South Africans are all given equal opportunity to have their dreams come true every Wednesday and Saturday with the draw of the weekly lottery numbers. The lottery is an easy way for any South African to become a millionaire overnight, but before that can happen you must first purchase your lotto ticket and choose your 6 numbers.
The South African national lottery works as follows, there are 49 balls numbered from 1 to 49. A machine then randomly selects 6 of these 49 balls and the numbers portrayed on these 6 balls are the winning lotto numbers. After the 6 winning balls are drawn a 7th ball called the bonus ball is drawn. For you to win, you must have all 6 the winning numbers on a valid lotto ticket in a row. This also means that the same number will not appear twice in the same lottery draw. Your winning lotto ticket is then valid for 1 year and if you don’t claim your prize money within in this time, your ticket will expire and you will forfeit your winnings. Luckily you don’t have to match all 6 numbers to be a winner, as you can start winning from matching only 3 numbers. The bonus ball helps improve your winning chances as you will get a higher prize money by matching 5 numbers and the bonus ball then by just matching 5 numbers.
The odds seem to be in your favour as 6 numbers out of 49 is not that high a figure and the fact that it does not matter in which order the balls are drawn, as long as you have all 6 numbers. This unfortunately is not completely true and the chance of you getting all 6 numbers in a single row is round about 1 in 13 183 816 if worked out mathematically correct.
These figures seems outrageous to some but some use them to predict possible future lotto numbers, as the same chances you have to win the lotto is the same amount of chance that previous winning lotto results will ever be repeated.