Ontario Lotto Max: Winning Ticket Stories
Usable for the province of Ontario, Lotto Max is hosted by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation. For those among you who are not really aware of the works of OLG, one singular number might change everything. Ever since the year 195, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has provided around $55 billion in the form of winning numbers to the people of the province of Ontario. While OLG is offering quite a lot of gambling options, including Lotto 6/49, Daily Keno, Poker Lotto, Crossword Deluxe, table games, live casino, slots, and also sports betting, it is Lotto Max that stands out. Massive winnings are attributed to this OLG lottery.
In this article, we would like to extrapolate the system which stands behind Lotto Max before going over to the main purpose of our text: giving some insights around winner stories when it comes to the popular lottery. In this regard, we will also discuss the potentials in terms of jackpot prizes as well as the overall winning process. Stay tuned and learn more about Ontario Lotto Max!
How to play Ontario Lotto Max
First of all, it is of utmost importance to note that an Ontario ticket holder can only redeem the winning ticket in the province of Ontario itself. In order to purchase a ticket or tickets (keep in mind that getting multiple tickets will not raise the odds of winning!), there are multiple ways of doing so. The good old classic is to get it at the local retail. Here you can either:
- ask the lottery retailer for a Quick Pick or
- you use the Lotto Max selection slip where you mark seven numbers ranging from 1 to 50. These numbers will be the playing numbers. For each of those sets of numbers, the selection slip will additionally generate two sets of numbers. Per ticket, you can play up to five times and you also have the freedom to participate in several Lotto Max draws by naming the preferred number of draws in the Advance Play box.
- In Ontario, you also have the availability of Encore which is basically a bonus game that can be purchased for just $1. Encore offers winnings of $1 million beyond either way granted potentials. With its 22 ways to win and prizes starting at $2, it is sure worth the extra dollar also.
If you do not want to pay a visit to retail, you can alternatively purchase Lotto Max tickets via the website of OLG. All you need to do is register an account on the page and then you are eligible for the huge range of games offered by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.
As soon as you find your desired lottery game, you just select “Buy Tickets” and pick your numbers. If you want to leave it up to the system, you can also choose “Auto Pick” which will automatically shuffle the numbers for you. After all this is completed, you are in for purchasing the Lotto Max ticket.
If you never want to miss out on a draw, you have the chance to head for a lottery subscription. Accounts are not charged in advance. The schedule of the deal depends on the lottery. For Lotto Max it would be the following way (given you went for multi-draw with 2 draws as limit):
- On Monday your account is charged for the first ticket after the subscription has been finalized.
- Tuesday is a Lotto Max draw day.
- On Wednesday your account is charged for the 2nd ticket.
- Friday is the Lotto Max draw day.
That’s it. And under the subscription details of your personal account, you can always cancel also.
What the Ontario Lotto Max Ticket Offers
The Ontario Lottery Lotto Max draws twice a week – on Tuesdays and Fridays. The time frame is going until 10.30 p.m. (Eastern time) on the corresponding draw nights.
Per $5 play you get 3 sets of numbers for your Lotto Max ticket. Each of these sets consists of seven numbers within the scope of 1 to 50. The jackpot prize starts at $10 million. Successively, the money held by the jackpot can grow up to $70 million though! Players can play up to 52 draws (26 weeks) in advance and also add the aforementioned Encore in Ontario.
A nice gimmick of Lotto Max is that once the jackpot surpasses $50 million, MAXMILLIONS comes into play also. These are $1 million prizes that can be obtained together (!) with the main jackpot during draws on the same date. Meaning that your Lotto Max ticket actually provides combined chances for a further $1 million in cash. The full seven numbers must be matched in order to win MAXMILLIONS.
MAXMILLIONS that are not won during a draw where the main jackpot is achieved, will be added to the baseline jackpot ($10 million) of the next draw. Whenever the main Lotto Max jackpot is not won at the same, remaining MAXMILLIONS carry forward to the next draw in their unique form.
In case you want to play with multiple selections you are eligible for combination play. Eight-number and nine-number combinations are accessible. This gives you the chance to win multiple Lotto Max prizes at the same time. Eight-number combinations cost $80 per draw while nine-number combinations cost $180 per draw.
Ontario Lotto Max Prizes and Odds
Every ticket sold per draw is fully contributing to the overall prize fund, right? Not fully. The precise number is actually 48% of draw sales revenue. Out of this prize fund, $20 and free play prizes are paid first, and afterward, the balance is allocated to 4/7 + Bonus, 5/7, 5/7+ Bonus, 6/7, 6/7 + Bonus, and 7/7 prize categories. If more than one person has a winning ticket among a category, the prizes are naturally shared. If there are remaining funds starting with the 4/7 category and upwards, these will be allocated towards the 7/7 prize for the upcoming draw. The main jackpot is capped at $70 million.
As visible in this chart, the odds of winning any prize per $5 play is 1 in 7. Free play (which is nothing else but a free bet of three sets of computer-generated numbers) has odds of 1 in 8,50 per $5 play. This carries on until we arrive at the odds for a winning ticket taking the main jackpot. The odds regarding this are 1 in 33,294,800. And accordingly demands quite the luck. The same goes for the MAXMILLIONS $1 million prizes since they also require 7 out of 7 at the Ontario Lottery in Canada.
OLG Security and Fairness
Just back in May 2019, the Lotto Max lottery draws were updated through the Interprovincial Lottery Corporation (ILC). Random Number Generators were taking their place instead of balls. The established RNG uses a proprietary algorithm to generate completely random numbers. In terms of randomness, there are specific procedures to make sure that the numbers are truly random. Under these circumstances, external checks are independently done by Grant Thornton LLP and Deloitte also performs a parallel draw to support the effort from a different geographical destination.
Furthermore, Gaming Laboratories International, LLC (GLI) has reviewed the Random Number Generator and certified it as secure and applicable for the sake of lottery draws. In light of no ball shuffling event happening, animated videos of the Lotto Max draw can be viewed at OLG whenever the randomized drawing procedure is complete.
Ontario Lotto Max App
The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation is also boasting a mobile app for iOS and Android. Those can be conveniently downloaded for free from the Play Store or the App Store. You do not even need a login to just use the plain features like scanning your ticket for a potential winning line. On the other hand, you can nevertheless access your OLG online account to play casino games, deposit or withdraw money, and so on.
The features granted by the app include:
- purchasing tickets online
- making a (Lotto Max) ticket subscription
- viewing official winning numbers
- demo play free slots
- being eligible for customized promotions
- and much more!
Lotto Max Winning Numbers History
You can always check up on past official winning numbers concerning Lotto Max Encore. The corresponding link can be found here. First and foremost you will get to see the latest Lotto Max draw results. There is an integrated option though where you can just add your dates (remember that draws are only occurring on Tuesdays and Fridays) and follow up on past draws.
Let’s just try this out with a rather random date of November 9th, 2021. This day saw 125,864 cash winners all in all. While no main jackpot was won, one lucky person was able to receive 6 out of 7 plus bonus number. Thereby winning a fantastic $196,118.30. Additionally, 584,502 people won a free play ticket.
Who Won the Ontario Lotto Max Jackpot
If you are interested in discovering a winning ticket retailer in the province of Ontario, you have a nice tool readily available. OLG is offering a list of retailers who sold tickets resulting in a winning amount of more than $10,000. You have the chance to determine both the region and/or postal code of the area where you want to research the submitted data. When looking at the overall data ranging from May 1st until November 1st, we can see that a winning ticket worth $65,000,000 was sold at Marinas Express Mart (19659 Leslie St Log-1VO Sharon) on the 6th of July.
Other tickets with a value equaling or more than $10 million were sold on the 22nd of June ($35,000,000) for Lotto Max. When digging deeper, it becomes clear that this was a shared main jackpot between two winners from Ontario and British Columbia. The Lotto Max winning numbers were 07, 11, 22, 28, 33, 44, 49, and bonus 10.
This makes it easily digestible that Lotto Max is actually the responsible type of lottery resulting in the two major biggest wins for an Ontario ticket holder.
Lotto Max Winner Story in the Canadian Press
Since the main jackpot has been increased from $60 million to $70 in 2019, there have been six grand winners taking the life-changing prize. Four of those were coming from the province of Ontario while the other two came from Quebec. Yet again out of the four Ontario winning numbers, 2 were having the luck via a free-play set of numbers and the other two were using the Quick Play system choosing the numbers automatically. Let’s have a look at two of those Ontarian lottery winner stories.
Adlin Lewis of Brampton: Winner of $70 Million
(image source: https://www.bramptonguardian.com/news-story/9808228-brampton-man-wins-record-70-million-lotto-max-prize/)
In early 2020 slightly before the onset of the Corona pandemia, the 49-year-old Brampton fellow Adlin Lewis won the ultimate jackpot prize of $70 million. The purchase of the winning ticket had occurred at George’s Convenience on Mississauga Road. Before he won big, he had been playing the lottery for more than 20 years. The credit risk manager could not believe his eyes when he scanned the ticket with the OLG app and got the notification that the jackpot is his to take.
The winning numbers were obtained with a free-play ticket by the way.
Ontario Lotto Max $70 Million to Donna Williamson and David Overall
(image source: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/these-two-ontario-friends-have-won-the-70-million-lotto-max-jackpot-1.5064909)
After more than 10 years of collective group play, Donna Williamson of Thornville and David Overall of Oakville won the jackpot worth $70 million. Also in this case the game was successful via a free-play ticket. It was Donna acting as the lucky charm since she used the last free ticket the duo had in store. The grocery industry worker Overall and the retired finance employee Williamson said that they were not capable of realizing that they were factually the sole winners of the main jackpot. The event caused Williamson to locate it outside of any spectrum she would have ever processed as possible.
While Overall was stating his wish to buy a cottage after the acceptance of the winning numbers, Williamson wanted to invest money into traveling whenever the Covid-19 pandemic is more under control.
Become your very own Winner Story
Lotto Max is an OLG lottery with its unique potential. The odds of winning any prize are pretty good with 1 in 7 per $5 play. Especially the free-play tickets for 3 out of 7 matching numbers have also shown to be proper prerequisites for establishing winning numbers of the next draw of Lotto Max. In this way, two out of four jackpots were won in Ontario. The overall odds of winning the major prize are 1 in 33,294,800 which is certainly coming with less likelihood than Lotto 6/49 with 1 in 13,9 million.
On the other hand, it was especially Lotto Max Encore that served as the foundation of the two crucial winning tickets between May and Nov 2021. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has certainly done a fine job of creating a safe and sound environment with an independently certified Random Number Generator and necessary security infrastructure.
No big surprise, therefore, that Lotto Max triggers attention and desires whenever another Tuesday and/or Friday draw arrives!
Ontario Lotto Max FAQ
Where can I find the Ontario Lotto Max Winning Numbers History?
OLG saves the past winning numbers on its website. The only thing you have to do is follow this link and you can analyze the official history right away.
Are there Lotto Max winners that won the full $70 million?
Yes, there are. If we only speak about the people from Ontario we had four winners since the changes were made to the jackpot volume. Overall it was 6 lottery winners though whereas two further ones went to purchase their tickers in Quebec.
Do I have to install the Ontario Lotto Max app?
No. You do not have to install the app to purchase tickets online. Alternatively, you could easily get your game on whenever visiting your local retail. The software does offer some advantages nonetheless which are ongoing promotions, Lotto Max and other game subscriptions, access to casino slots and live casino, deposits as well as withdrawals, and much more.
At which basic level does the Lotto Max jackpot seed?
48% of cash sales revenue is going into the main jackpot. It seeds at a ground level of $10 million and continues to grow and grow. Starting with $50 million, the $1 MAXMILLIONS join the game. The jackpot is capped at a maximum level of $70 million.
