How to Play Lotto Online Ireland

Our Recommended Top Lotto Sites

With so many excellent lotto sites in Ireland, what makes these stand out above the rest? Here is a quick review of each of our recommended lotto sites.

The Lotter

The Lotter is an excellent registered lotto site that offers players a variety of lottery games, with many ways to strike a win! You can choose from a variety of international lotto games. In all, you can buy tickets for more than 45 different lottery draws. However, not only can you buy tickets for Ireland lotteries, but also for lotteries in Brazil, Europe, the US and even Russia. The website will welcome you by offering you the chance to play a bundle of tickets with discounts for high volume purchases. Why buy one ticket when you can buy so many more for less? It offers jackpots galore, with the majority of lottos being drawn every Saturday and Wednesday.

It was founded back in 2002 and was the first site that offered such big jackpot lotto prizes. It has since built up a huge reputation and has paid out more than €32 million in official lottery game wins since it has been operating. When you are registered with the site, should you subscribe, then you will get every 10th ticket for free or save up to 25% on Multi-Draw (terms and condition apply. Please gamble responsibly).

Giant Lottos.com

Giant Lottos is a company that operates a proxy service. As such, it allows players to take part in any lottery draw from around the world where they would otherwise be excluded. It was originally launched back in 2007 and has now got over 150,000 players, all looking to hit the big jackpots. This is a middle man lottery site and is one of the best in Ireland. To welcome new players, it offers €17 to play in all of the world’s biggest jackpot draws with a no-win refund guarantee! (Terms and conditions apply. Please gamble responsibly).

What You Should Consider When Choosing an Online Lotto

One of the biggest attractions of playing lotto online is the variety and choice available. They can play on local lotteries, National lotteries, Powerball, Overseas draws and even scratchcards! Whatever way you want to play, there are numerous choices for all, all offering an exceptional prize if you’re lucky enough to hit the jackpot. However, there are certain pieces of information you need to factor in before you pick which online lotto game you want to play.

Number Draw or Instant Win Game?

The first thing you need to factor in is whether you are looking to play an instant win game, where you get your result there and then, or whether you want to join a ‘wait for number draw’ lotto, where you may well have to wait for the Wednesday or Saturday for the official results. Obviously, the benefit of instant win games is you know whether you have hit the jackpot prize straight away. Whereas waiting for the bi-weekly draw stretches out the wait. Obviously, fans of scratch cards will enjoy the instant win element, as they know straight away as to whether they have won a prize and how much they have won. This can be much more exciting for many players. Additionally, the odds of winning when you buy a scratchcard are higher than with lotto games. Scratch cards offer more chance of winning smaller prizes more often. However, with a National Lotto or Powerball lotto, these are much more large scale and the jackpot prizes on offer are much larger.

Many players don’t have the patience to wait for the official results from a weekly or bi-weekly draw. In that case instant win would be the preferred game type. However, as a player, you don’t have to choose one or the other, you can enjoy both. Most top lotto providers have always offered sidegame scratchcards and brand them with well known global names such as Monopoly etc. So, whilst players are waiting for their weekly lottery results to come in, they can play on scratchcards to pass the time away.

The Size of the Jackpot

Some people may say that size isn’t everything, but that isn’t the case when it comes to online lottery. The size of the jackpot is one of the main factors to consider when choosing your game. The size of lotto jackpots can vary a lot. Some may offer a jackpot worth thousands, whereas others will offer a jackpot worth millions! For example, take the National Lottery in the UK. The standard prize for this would be well over a million. However, if you look at other popular UK Lottos such as The Postcode Lottery or Health Lottery, the jackpot doesn’t usually get much bigger than £100,000. In all countries and with most lotto operators, there will be a huge lottery designed to catch your attention with an eye-watering jackpot. Again, with the UK’s National Lottery, as well as the major lottery on offer, the same operator also offers the smaller Thunder Ball lottery as a side lotto, which offers more chances of winning smaller prizes.

Then, we cannot forget those lottos that are transnational. These are those jackpot lottos that offer the biggest potential for huge winnings. For example, the Euromillions lotto, available to players all across Europe, offers players the chance to win over a hundred million in jackpot prizes. Then, when you factor in rollovers, these wins can be breathtaking.

As well as this, the US offers its residents a multi-state Powerball lotto and Mega Millions draws, which are hugely popular all across the different states, with jackpots regularly being more than €100 million.

Before, people could only access the lottos that they could physically enter. However, because of the more recent emergence of Online Concierge Services, the size of the lotto market has got much bigger. This has led to players being able to enter lotteries from outside of their own country which wasn’t possible before. The reason players can enjoy all different worldwide lottos is because of sites such as The Lotter and Giant Lottos.com. These companies have offices in different countries which means that their employees can buy these lottery tickets in person on behalf of their online customers. Because of this, it’s a great idea to choose a lottery product through an online concierge as you will be able to access a wider variety of global lotteries with even bigger and better jackpots available.

 

The Odds of Winning Prizes

The size of the lotto jackpot can often cloud your vision, with your eyes on the prize. However, in reality, the chance of winning a jackpot worth millions is minuscule. In general, the larger the lottery jackpot, the less chance you have of winning. As such, trying to come up with a strategy may be beneficial. This may mean trying out for smaller lotteries or else taking the different prize tiers into consideration.

Most lotteries are similar in the fact that they offer more than just jackpot wins. There are the prize tiers to consider. This may mean players choosing a core line of numbers and including bonus balls. Combine the bonus balls with your core line of numbers and you could win an even better, higher tier lotto prize. However, it is important to remember that lottos are different depending on where they are. Some can work in very different ways. For example:

• In the UK National Lottery, players need to select 6 numbers between 1 and 59 as well as one bonus ball. As such, the odds of winning the jackpot (matching all six numbers) are 1: 13,983,816.
• In the SuperEnalotto in Italy, players need to pick 6 numbers between 1 and 90 as well as an extra SuperStar bonus number. This makes it harder to win than the UK lottery, with chances being 1: 622,614,630.
• However, then we have Spain’s La Primitiva, where players are asked to choose 6 numbers from between 1 – 49. They are then assigned a random number called the ‘Reintegro’. To win the jackpot, players need to match all 6 numbers as well as the Reintegro, which makes the odds of winning even more unlikely, at 1: 139,838,160 – almost 10-times less likely than in the UK.

As you can see from the above example, although still small chances of winning the UK lotto, you are still much more likely to win that than Italy or Spain’s national lotteries. However, this also means that the prize is likely to be smaller as well. If you want an even better chance of winning, then you should consider entering the UK Health Lottery jackpot, which is 21-times easier to win then the UK’s national lotto.

Prize Tiers

In addition to this, players also need to take the prize tiers into consideration when they decide which lottery game they want to enter. It’s clear that the odds of hitting a jackpot win worth millions is minimal. However, most lottos offer players the chance to win a selection of smaller sizes for matching less numbers combined with bonus balls. As such, if you choose a lotto with more sub jackpot prize tiers options, then you will have more chance of getting some kind of return. The UK National Lottery has five prize tiers compared to the US Mega Millions’ 8 prize tiers. So, effectively, you have more chance of winning a prize in the US game compared to the UK game.

How To Play Lotto in Ireland

When it comes to the Ireland National lottery, there are some basic facts you need to know. Firstly, the lotto in Ireland is a game where you need to pick 6 numbers from 40. You then have the chance to win a jackpot of €1 million per draw. In order to play the game, simply choose at least four lines comprising of six numbers each. Each line costs €0.70. If you want, you can auto-generate your lottery numbers if you have no specific preference.

Additionally, you could also choose to buy a lucky dip, which starts at €5.60 for 8 lotto lines and goes all the way up to €28 for a ‘Triple Dip’ which consists of 18 lotto lines as well as 18 Powerball lines plus one Strike! line. In order to win the lotto jackpot, you will need to match all of the six main draw numbers. However, you can also win lesser prizes for matching three main numbers, three main numbers and a bonus ball, and more. The Ireland Lotto draws take place on Wednesdays and Saturday evenings at 8.20pm IEST. However, the ticket sales officially close at 7.30pm the same evening.

On your lotto playslip, you then need to confirm which draw or draws you are choosing to enter. You can buy tickets in advance for up to ten future draws.

The Powerball

As stated previously, you can also enter the Powerball draw. This sees the Powerball being drawn from a completely separate pot that contains ten balls. Again, there are prize tiers to consider, which range between matching three numbers from the main draw plus the Powerball, all the way up to matching all six main draw balls plus the Powerball. If you do decide to add a Powerball pick, then it will raise the cost of each line to €1.50. However, because it unocks a lot more prize tiers, this is often a good call.

The Powerball is drawn from a separate pot of ten balls, and prize tiers range from matching three main draw numbers plus the Powerball to matching all six main balls and the Powerball.

The odds of winning the Ireland lotto comes in at around 1 in 38 million, which, when compared to other national lotteries, is quite favourable. The jackpot prize can only reach €50 million before they hold a ‘Must Be Won’ draw, which requires a win.

If you do decide to add a Powerball to your lotto ticket, then you simply need to pick a number between 1 to 10 in the Powerball panel of the lotto playslip. Because Powerball is directly linked to the National lotto you can only play Powerball if you play the lotto. As such, the minimum Powerball cost is €6 which will give you four Powerball lotto lines.

Playing Strike!

We mentioned Strike! earlier, which some people may not be familiar with. In order to play Strike! you need to pick four numbers ranging between 1 to 40 for each line. However, with this game, the order of your numbers is also very important. To win Strike! you need to match either one, two, three or four balls in the right order. However, they do not need to be the very first balls that are drawn. So, if you match the second and third balls you can still get a two-match win. In this game, it is the position of your number matches that is important. It’s not just how many you match, but the order in which you match them.

If you want to claim the Strike! jackpot, normally around €700,000, then you need to match the first four balls in the correct order. The odds of doing this is about 1 in 2.2 million.

Unlike Powerball, you do not need to play the main lotto game to play Strike! If you want, you can play the Strike! lotto solo for €1 per line. The maximum you can play at any one single Strike! draw is 20 lines, at a cost of €20 and the draws take place alongside the main draw on Wednesday and Saturday evenings.

Lucky Dips

Lucky Dips (also referred to as ‘Dips’) are tickets that are randomly chosen and auto-generated. They provide you with a set number of prepaid lotto lines, meaning you don’t have to choose the numbers yourself, which saves a lot of time.

Dips are available in the following combinations

For the Lotto Only, these are the lucky dips available to buy:

• 8 lotto lines – €5.60
• 10 lotto lines – €7.00
• 15 lotto lines – €10.50
• 20 lotto lines – €12.00

There is also the opportunity to purchase Power Dips, which is a combination of the lotto and Powerball draws

• 8 lotto lines plus 8 Powerball lines – €12.00
• 10 lotto lines plus 10 Powerball lines – €15.00
• 12 lotto lines plus 12 Powerball lines – €18.00
• 16 lotto lines plus 16 Powerball lines – €24.00

Then, finally, we have the Triple Dip, which is a combination of lotto lines, Powerball lines plus Strike! lines.

• 10 lotto lines plus 10 Powerball lines plus 1 Strike! line – €16.00
• 10 lotto lines plus 10 Powerball lines plus 3 Strike! lines – €18.00
• 12 lotto lines plus 12 Powerball lines plus 2 Strike! lines – €20.00
• 16 lotto lines plus 16 Powerball lines plus 1 Strike! line – €25.o
• 18 lotto lines plus 18 Powerball lines plus 1 Strike! line – €28.00

Treatment of Unclaimed Lotto Prizes

It is important to remember that if you are lucky enough to win a lotto prize, then you will need to claim your prize within a set time limit. If you haven’t claimed your win within 12 months of your numbers being drawn, then it will be officially considered an ‘unclaimed prize’. This unclaimed amount will then be kept as part of the lottery prize fund account, which is held by the Lotteries Commission. This money will then be used for distribution in future lottery wins.

Tax Implications of Winning the Lottery

Should you be lucky enough to win the Ireland lotto as an Irish player – the most won lotto numbers are here – then you won’t have to pay tax, but for international lotteries, you need to check all of the terms of that lotto.