Find out why you should play the Spanish National Lottery at least once!

The Spanish National Lottery is a game of chance organized by the Spanish government. It was first launched in 1812 to increase state revenues without raising taxes. Since then, it has become a much-anticipated annual tradition, with weekly and extraordinary draws offering large sums of money in prizes.

But in addition, the National Lottery has a great advantage compared to the rest of the lotteries that you can commonly find. It is one of the lotteries that offers more prizes and more probabilities of winning. That's right: although sometimes its prizes can go unnoticed next to mega millionaire lotteries such as Powerball or Euromillions, the truth is that it offers quite high chances of winning, and not negligible prizes at all.

And, if you were interested in trying your luck with one of the most popular and famous lotteries in Spain, this weekend may be a great time to do it: on Saturday, July 8, the National Lottery organizes an Extraordinary July Draw, with many more prizes and much higher than usual. So let's learn a little more about this lottery and this Saturday's draw.

How to play the National Lottery

Playing the National Lottery is very easy. You only need to buy from one to ten tenths, which is a fraction of a ticket with a 5-digit number. You can participate in the draw whether you are in Spain or abroad, through online operators such as Lottofy. The draws take place twice a week, every Thursday and Saturday, unless there is a special draw, such as the Sorteos Extraordinarios, the Christmas Lottery, etc., in which sometimes it is necessary to modify the date of the draw to adapt to a specific event. Let's see a little more in detail how the draw works.

Types of tickets available

In the National Lottery, each ticket or "tenth" has a five-digit number. There are 100,000 numbers available, from 00000 to 99999. Each number is printed in 10 series, and each series is divided into 10 décimos. This means that there are 10 million tenths available for each drawing.

But what is at tenth thing? Unlike other lotteries, the National Lottery ticket is divided into 10 fractions, which are known as tenths. The difference between buying a complete ticket or just one or several fractions ( tenths), is then transferred to the prizes. If the number of your tenth is awarded, you will be entitled to the whole prize to the series only in the case that you have bought the 10 tenths of the ticket. If you have only bought one tenth of the ticket, you will keep one tenth of the prize.

Is it better to buy the whole ticket or just one tenth? Well, that will depend on your budget and the strategy you prefer to follow. Some people prefer to buy the whole series of the ticket, while others prefer to use the same money to buy more tickets of different numbers to increase the chances of winning at least a fraction of the prize.

Odds of winning the National Lottery

Although the odds of winning the National Lottery may seem low, they are actually higher than in many other games of chance, and it is one of the main attractions of this lottery. In the National Lottery, you have a one in 100,000 chance of winning the first price, which is much better than the odds of other popular lotteries.

Odds Calculation

Calculating the odds of winning in the National Lottery is quite simple. For example, if you buy a ticket for the July Extraordinary Draw, you have a one in 100,000 chance of winning the first prize. However, there are many other prizes available, so your overall odds of winning a prize are much higher. Taking into account all the prizes available for this Sorteo Extraordinario, it is estimated that each tenth has a 36.3% chance of winning at least one of the prizes.

Comparison with other lottery games

If we compare the National Lottery with other games of chance, we will see that the odds are quite favorable. For example, in the Primitiva and Bonoloto you have 1 chance in almost 14 million to match 6 numbers, in the Gordo de la Primitiva 1 chance in almost 32 million and in the Euromillions 1 chance in almost 140 million. As you can see, the odds of winning in the National Lottery are much better.

July's Extraordinary Draw of the Spanish National Lottery

The Extraordinary Draws are some of the most awaited of the National Lottery, since in these draws the amount and the amount of the prizes at stake increases. This Saturday the Extraordinary Draw of July will take place, which is celebrated as the beginning of the summer vacations. In this draw, millions of euros in prizes are distributed, which makes it one of the most exciting of the year.

Details of the draw

The July Extraordinary Draw is held on Saturday, July 1st at 13:00 hours (Spanish time). Participants can buy tickets up to a few hours before the draw. In addition to the first prize, there is a second and a third prize, as well as different draws and smaller prizes. Let's see a little more about it.

Prizes at stake

In the July Extraordinary Draw, a total of 105 million euros are distributed in various prizes. In total, there are some 37,555 prizes, which makes it one of the draws with the most prizes at stake. However, among all the prizes the most outstanding are:

• A First Prize of 150,000 euros per tenth.
• A Second Prize of 30,000 euros per tenth.
• A Third Prize of 15,000 euros per tenth.
• Twelve prizes of 7,500 euros per tenth.

To win any of these prizes, it will be necessary to match the 5 numbers drawn for each one. This means that first the 5 numbers that will form the first prize will be selected, then the 5 numbers of the second, then the third, and so on. However, there will also be more prizes for those who match some of the digits of the winning numbers, which significantly increases the number of prizes available.