How to Play the EuroMillions

Most countries have their own national lottery draws, with the UK’s 20-year old ‘Lotto’ a prime example of how such weekly events can captivate a nation and encourage them to chase a dream of becoming millionaires. While this particular draw is relatively straightforward, it becomes slightly more complex when you try and involve a whole continent – which isn’t surprising really when you think about it!

The EuroMillions draw takes place twice a week throughout the year, on Tuesday’s and Friday’s, and offers players huge sums of money in terms of the jackpot. During 2014, the lowest jackpot offered to players was £11 million, and the draw itself has a cap of €190 before being reset making it highly worthwhile to take part if you’re a fan of playing your own national lottery.

While you can play and find plenty of information on the EuroMillions draw on lottosend.com (from anywhere in the world), you might want to know a bit more about just how it works before you sign up for an account anywhere or head out looking to buy a ticket ahead of the next draw.

The first thing you need to know is that there are two ways of playing. You can either play online through the site itself or an online lottery service, like the aforementioned Lottosend, or you can go to any store selling lottery tickets and play in person by marking off the numbers on your ticket and handing it in in exactly the same way as how you play your national lottery.

To play the online version of the game, you start out by registering an account either through the site directly or through the messenger service, depositing the money to play into your account and then selecting the draw you wish to take part in. It could be the Tuesday draw, the Friday draw or even both, and you can choose anything up to four weeks in advance.

From here you can then either manually select the numbers you want to play with, with five main numbers and two ‘lucky stars’, or choose auto select which users a random number generator to pick the numbers for you.

With the in-store ticket version of the game, it’s very simple. Simply choose the numbers on the slip by marking them off (a bit like ticking off a number in bingo) and your lucky stars – again you can choose the ‘lucky dip’ option whereby a computer will pick them for you; take your slip to the till, hand over your money and you’re in the draw.

With the online format, you will receive email updates on the draw news so that you know if you win a prize, but with the retailer-bought tickets you’ll have to go into a shop and have your ticket checked to see if you’re a winner. By winning online you can get the money transferred into your account (up to £50,000), but with the store-bought option you can be handed the cash – unless it’s a big win in which case you’ll have to visit the lottery office.