Lotto vs Powerball vs Strike

Updated 16 September 2026. New Zealand's Powerball rules changed on 13 September 2026: the Powerball pool grew from 10 balls to 14, Division 1 odds are now about 1 in 53.7 million per line, a new Division 8 was added, the starting jackpot rose to $5 million and the cap lifted from $50 million to $60 million. Where this article quotes odds, ball counts or jackpot limits, they describe the game as it was before that date. The current numbers are on Powerball is changing on 13 September 2026.

Most people buy all three without thinking much about how different they are. They're printed on the same ticket, but structurally they're three separate bets with three very different payout shapes.

Saturday's draw 2618 is a good one to pull apart, because all three top prizes were won on the same night.

The same six numbers, three different games

Bonus ball was 33.

Lotto: the base game

Lotto is the foundation. You pick six numbers from 1 to 40 and Division 1 goes to anyone matching all six. It's the cheapest entry and the one with the shallowest top prize — Division 1 is a fixed $1 million pool shared among winners, which is why four players took $250,000 each on Saturday.

Below the top, Lotto has the densest payout table of the three. Twenty players picked up $20,945 in Division 2 alone, and the lower divisions carry the bulk of the winners every single draw.

Powerball: the jackpot add-on

Powerball isn't a standalone game — it's an extra you bolt onto your Lotto lines for $0.80 each. Your line needs all six Lotto numbers plus the Powerball number, and the prize is the Lotto Division 1 share plus the jackpot. That's exactly why Saturday's winner took $28,250,000 rather than $28,000,000: $28 million from Powerball Division 1, plus the $250,000 Lotto Division 1 share their line had already earned.

That structure is worth understanding. A Powerball Division 1 winner has necessarily also won Lotto Division 1 — the two are stacked, not separate.

From 13 September the pool grows from 10 balls to 14, taking Division 1 odds from 1 in 38,383,800 to 1 in 53,737,320 per line, with the jackpot starting at $5 million instead of $4 million.

Strike: the order matters

Strike is the odd one out. You're betting on the first four Lotto balls coming out in the exact order they're drawn. Get all four in sequence and you take Division 1 — $400,000 on Saturday, shared by a single player.

That exact-order requirement makes Strike far more sensitive than the other two. Anyone who matched four numbers in any order got nothing; only the precise sequence counted. It also shows up in the winner counts: Division 2 (three in order) paid $629 to 113 people, Division 3 (two in order) paid $67 to 5,887. Small numbers compared with Lotto's lower divisions, because an ordered match is a much tighter target than an unordered one.

Strike is also the only one of the three with a jackpot that rolls independently of Powerball, which is why it had climbed to $400,000 by Saturday.

How much each one pays out

Looking at Saturday's full tables side by side:

The pattern holds across most draws. Lotto produces the most winners and the smallest top prize. Powerball produces the biggest number and the fewest winners. Strike sits in between on prize size but is the most sensitive to sequencing.

None of this makes one a better bet than another in expected-value terms — lotteries return a fixed proportion of sales as prizes, and the structure only changes how that money is distributed. What it does change is what you're actually buying: a steady drip of small wins, a tiny shot at a life-changing sum, or a bet on the exact order the balls fall.

As always, every draw is independent and the odds per line don't move based on what happened last week.