History of Lottery Games
The Italian word “lottery” has its origins in the early 16th century and was then a very popular game of chance. In this game, every participating player received cards with numbered squares and with certain values. Back then, a random number was drawn and the player with exactly this number won. You may recognise this being what we nowadays know as bingo.
In many countries, there is also a large national lottery, which is open to all participants who want to guess different numbers, which are then drawn following a random method. Today there are lots of different lotteries. There are bigger ones and smaller ones as well as public and private ones. First lotteries in the United Kingdom were brought in by Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century. At the time, the revenue generated by these lotteries was to be used for the repairs of damaged ports in the country. However, the lotteries were not particularly successful.
Penninglotten was the name of one of the first national lotteries that were sold in Sweden at the beginning of the 30s, then by a company owned by the state. The purpose was that all winnings should be given to cultural functions. Pretty soon afterwards there was a lot of problems with illegal gambling in connection with different sporting events. The state decided that all gambling should follow certain laws and regulations. As a result, Tipstjänst was founded which had a monopoly on all kinds of games in Sweden.
Tipstjänst were the first ones to introduce classic Lotto on the Swedish Gambling market at the beginning of the 80s. For starters, it was about guessing 7 numbers correctly of a pot of 35. Also having 6 or 5 numbers correct meant that you won. Afterwards, something called “bonus numbers” was added. The familiar game Joker made an appearance on this early lottery ticket, even if it was a totally different game. When Tipstjänst changed the name to Svenska Spel in the late 90s Lotto became a part of it, and the goal is still to get 7/35 correct numbers. If you are lucky enough to hit all seven of them including two numbers on above-mentioned Joker game you win the jackpot. This is a progressive jackpot starting at 75 000 000 SEK.
The highest win ever given to a single player on Lotto happened in 2010 and the amount was amazingly 214,6 million Swedish crowns.
Lottery games and rules
So, a lottery is a random game, where it is important to be lucky enough to guess the right numbers. The correct numbers are presented on certain days, in total 4 times a week and all of them are shown on the channel TV4. You pay for the amount for grids you wants to play and one grid is 3 SEK. There is a minimum of 2 grids if you play in a betting shop. If you play online at svenskaspel.se it’s totally free. If you want to participate in the previously mentioned Joker game you pay a little extra to enter the big one.
The general prize pool in lottery games are divided as follows:
- 7 correct numbers 34 %
- 6+1 correct numbers 12 %
- 6 correct numbers 7 %
- 5 correct numbers 12
- 4 correct numbers 35 %
The jackpot can only be won by those who participate in both Lotto and Joker, have 7 correct numbers in the Lotto game and at least to 2 numbers in the Joker draw.
Remember that you have to choose if you want to play both on Lotto 1 and 2 or just one of them. You also need to choose what day you want to play; Wednesday or Saturday. If you want to choose your own numbers that’s fine, but they can also be randomly selected.