The Virginia Lottery has announced an addition to its digital lotto offerings: Pick 4 online.
Online players can now purchase tickets for the popular game and longtime staple of the VA Lotto.
The Pick 4 and Pick 4 online feature twice-daily draws. The actual drawing is the same whether you buy your tickets online or at a traditional brick-and-mortar retail outlet.
With this latest addition, the Virginia Lottery has now reunited two of its favorite games online: Pick 3 and Pick 4.
Play Pick 4 online via Virginia Lottery
The VA Lottery debuted Pick 3 online in July. At the time, lottery officials told PlayVirginia they expected to add Pick 4 to online sales at some point in the near future.
Less than three months later, the ability to purchase tickets online for the devilishly simple Pick 4 game is here.
So, how do you play Pick 4? As the name might suggest, you select a four-digit number for your chosen drawing. You then hope to match all four of the balls, which are numbered 0-9, that are chosen.
Because Pick 4 offers 10,000 possible number combinations (0000 to 9999), you have a 1-in-10,000 chance of winning (.0001%) on a straight ticket. However, the “house edge” is 50%, so if you win, you win $5,000 on a $1 ticket while the lotto keeps the other half.
You can actually play Pick 4 for $1 or 50 cents. With the latter option, a winning 50-cent Pick 4 ticket would earn a $2,500 jackpot.
But that’s not the only way Pick 4 can work. The VA Lottery offers numerous ways to play, each with corresponding odds, including:
- Exact Order plays
- Any Order plays
- 50/50 plays
- Combo plays
- Pair plays
Simply head to the VA Lotto website to purchase tickets for the daily draw games. Pick 3 drawings and Pick 4 drawings take place with a daytime draw at 1:59 p.m., and the nighttime draw is at 11 p.m.
What about the Fireball?
Back in May, the Virginia Lottery introduced the “Fireball” option to Pick 3 and Pick 4. Right now, the Fireball option isn’t available online. However, in the Pick 4 online announcement, officials dropped a hint and told players to “stay tuned for future updates.”
With the optional Fireball add-on, which is currently an option at retail lotto outlets, Pick 3 and Pick 4 tickets cost twice as much.
However, players can swap out a regular number with the Fireball to make new combinations. You can actually win multiple times on the same play, thanks to Fireball.
That flexibility, though, comes at a cost with your Fireball prize, namely a smaller jackpot. For example, an exact match Pick 4 jackpot pays $1,500 rather than the normal $5,000.
However, keep in mind that the Fireball payouts are in addition to the regular Pick 3 and Pick 4 prizes, so you can score multiple ways.
Here’s a nifty video from the VA Lottery about how the game works:
If you decide to give Pick 4 a test run, you won’t be alone. Although the VA Lottery offers a wide variety of games, including the immensely popular scratch-off tickets, daily draw games (Pick 3, Pick 4, and Cash 5) account for about a third of all sales.
