It's easy to see why lotteries are so popular. With as low as a dollar bet (sometimes even as low as 50 cents), you have the potential to win hundreds, thousands, even millions of dollars in an instant. But if you are going to use your hard-earned money to buy tickets, you should learn a little bit about how to win the lottery. Don't be like the masses spending money that will NEVER provide you any winnings in return. If you are going to bet on the lottery, you should start win those games that give you the best odds in winning. And currently, those games are the "pick 3" lotteries. These lotteries are also know as "Win 3" or "Play 3."

Most people tend to play the "bigger" lotteries like the Powerball, MegaMillions, and other games that have payouts in excess of five million dollars. And when those games have jackpots over 100 million dollars, you can expect to find lines of people buying tickets at your local gas station or convenient store. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't play those lotteries (especially when their jackpots reach into $50 million plus range). I mean, there's still a small chance (very, very small chance) that you will win. But the odds are so high of not winning, that you should never expect to win.

Now, dealing with Pick 3 lotteries isn't a different story. While the odds of winning one of the major multi-million dollar jackpot lotteries is around 1 in 170 million, the odds of winning the Pick 3 lotto is a mere 1 in 1000. And that's if you are playing to win it "straight" or exact match. If you are playing the box version, you odds are around 1 in 167. Knowing your odds of winning is a critical thing to know when trying to figure out how to win the lottery.

Let me put it in some perspective. Usually, for the huge jackpot lotteries, numbers are drawn twice a week. That means that there are 104 drawing per year. With the odds at 1 in 170,00,000, if you played the lottery every drawing for the next 1,634,615 years (yes, that's 1.6+ million years), then you should expect to win the jackpot just one time. Just once! Those are very poor odds. I would still play the game every once in a while because someone's going to win, but I wouldn't be counting on winning in order to pay next month's rent.

Now let's see the Pick 3 lottery. You get to choose three numbers, and you have a choice of 10 different numbers for each of those positions. That means that if you were playing for an exact match (ie. "straight"), you have a 1 in 1000 chance of winning. The payout on winning this way is usually about $500. Not millions of dollars, but the odds of winning are DRASTICALLY higher. And if you play different numbers, you can make those odds even lower. Meaning, if you play two different numbers, your odds are then 2 in 1000 (which breaks down to 1 in 500).

You could choose to try to win by "box." Meaning that if the 3 numbers you choose are drawn in any order, you still win. The odds are much lower (ie. 1 in 167), but the payout is much lower as well(usually around $80).

If you'd like to learn how to win the lottery, you need to consider which game realistically gives you the best chance of getting your hands on some cash. Although you won't become a millionaire by winning Pick 3 lottos, it is by far your best bet in actually winning some money by playing the lottery.