Pick 10: Why Matching Zero Numbers Wins a Prize
In New York's Pick 10, missing all ten of your numbers wins. The math behind it shows why that result is rarer than you'd think.
Pick 10 is New York's keno-style game. You choose ten numbers from 1 to 80, and twenty winning numbers are drawn each evening. You win for matching six, seven, eight, nine or all ten, and also for matching none at all. That last rule surprises people, but the math behind it is simple.
Missing everything is hard
Twenty of the eighty numbers are drawn, a quarter of the field. Each of your ten numbers has roughly a one-in-four chance of being drawn, so you'd expect about 2.5 matches. To match none, all ten of your numbers have to land among the sixty that weren't drawn:
C(60, 10) ÷ C(80, 10) ≈ 1 in 22
Compare that with matching six, about 1 in 87. A total miss is rarer than a six-number match, so it earns a prize.
The full picture
| Match | Odds (1 in) |
|---|---|
| 10 of 10 | 8,911,711 |
| 9 of 10 | 163,381 |
| 8 of 10 | 7,384 |
| 7 of 10 | 621 |
| 6 of 10 | 87 |
| 0 of 10 | 22 |
The top prize of $500,000 for all ten is a 1 in 8,911,711 shot.
Checking a Pick 10 ticket
With twenty numbers drawn it's easy to miss one. The checker on our Pick 10 page takes your ten numbers and counts the matches against every recent draw for you.