Thunderball Lottery

Complete Odds &
Return to Players

Effective May 12, 2010
           

The purpose of this page is to provide Thunderball Lottery players with the supplemental information that is not readily available on the sponsored lottery site.



Thunderball
Highlights
Mini
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Class Winners Losers Overall Odds Overall Return Return Sensitivity Payout per £

We believe this is important because most lotteries only provide players with minimal amount of information: the odds of each winning combination occurring; the overall probability of having a winning ticket; the price of each ticket; the game format; the total number of combinations; and a few other items.

However, this page fills in the missing blanks. Included here are the complete odds and probabilities of every winning and losing ticket. It provides you with a comparison of winners to losers, the monies collected, the monies distributed back to players, and more.

Lottery Power Picks has taken every effort to ensure that this summary information is correct by reading and bookmarking all information provided by the organizing lottery body. But, in certain instances, clearly defined rules are not written. In those instances, we made assumptions that are linguistically consistent with the rules. Should any information be incorrect, please inform us so that we may correct it. We hope you find this information useful in understanding the lottery you play.

Jackpot:  M
Reset Jackpot:
Note: Jackpot is fixed but you can play anyway
Table TB7: UK Thunderball Expanded Odds Calculations

About Thunderball Lottery is a UK mini lottery. It is managed by the National Lottery.

Format Thunderball requires a player to make 2 choices: (1) Pick 5 numbers out of a set of 39 white balls; and (2) Pick 1 Thunderball from a set of 14 red balls. If the player picks the same numbers as those that are drawn in the next drawing, the player wins the Jackpot prize. Smaller prizes are awarded for other combinations.

Class Thunderball is a Mini Lottery. We classify it as such because its Jackpot Parity is approximately £2 million, which is over £10 million.

Prizes The Thunderball jackpot prize is a constant
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, and, all other cash prizes are predefined as well. These are summarized in the table above. Note that Thunderball has no jackpot rollover, meaning that if no one wins the jackpot, it is simply not distributed back to the players. However, this is one of the few lotteries where multiple winners can each win and receive the jackpot prize.


Combinations In the Thunderball lottery, there are a total of
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combinations.

Winners Of these, there are
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winning combinations. This represents
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of the combinations. The overall odds of having a winning combination is
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to 1 (the lower the better).

Losers There are
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losing Thunderball combinations. This is
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of the combinations. The overall odds of having a losing combination is
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to 1 (the higher the better; because as this number gets closer to 1, nearly every ticket is a loser.

Price  Each Thunderball ticket costs 
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Money Raised  Assuming all tickets are sold and there are no duplicates, a total of 
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 will be raised.




Table TB-4: UK Thunderball Summary
Format 5/39+1/14
Class Mini
Min Jackpot
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Jackpot Type Cash
Combos
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Total Winners
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Total Losers
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Overall Winners
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Overall Losers
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Pct Winners
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Pct Losers
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Price
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Amount Raised
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Tot Payout
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Avg Ticket Payout
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Normalized Payout/£
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ReturnOn£
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Jackpot/Odds
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Return Sensitivity
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Jackpot Parity
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Prize Pool  Of this,  
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 will be allocated to the prize pool to be paid back to the players when the jackpot is set to  
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 Unlike many other lotteries, all Thunderball prizes are fixed, including the Jackpot.



Average Winning Ticket Payout  On the average, each winning ticket will pay 
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 to the players. Since a ticket costs 
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, the normalized payout per Pound spent is 
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Income Returned to Players  Based on this information 
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  of each £ raised will be returned to the players.


Return Sensitivity  If the Thunderball Jackpot changes by £1.0 million, the above Income Returned to Players will change by 
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 (up or down).


Jackpot Parity  In order for Thunderball to return £1.00 of each £ raised, the Jackpot must be equal to 
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References
You can learn more about the Thunderball Lottery and verify our findings by visiting our references.