Lottery is a real icon among chance games and is also an excellent alternative to win large amounts of money in exchange for a small investment. Nowadays, lottery is a very popular game and is played in many countries around the world. The origins of the game go back to ancient Genoa, where five seats of the senate of that republic were chosen in a draw or lottery game.

The Genoese senate had ninety members that were selected in the traditional way, but five of the senators were chosen by selecting five balls among fifty that were put inside a box, with the names of the candidates written on them. The candidates whose names were picked out, became the new senators.

The Genoese people were used to attend this kind of events to talk and discuss about the results of the raffle. After a while, people even started betting on the outcome of the draw and the public event became a major attraction that provided entertainment.

The improvised betting ritual became so popular that many local bankers, showing great interest in the matter, started supervising bets, gathering the money and paying for the bets when one player guessed the correct result.

A few years later, the game continued separately from the election and bankers continued conducting it. At the time, the first official lottery was founded, more precisely in 1629. Not many years went by before the game became very popular and crossed the borders to other nearby countries. Soon, the entire continent knew about lottery and its popularity increased.

In Spain, the lottery game arrived to stay and by 1763 draws took place on a monthly basis and all the financial benefits were used for charitable purposes. A few years later and due to the problem that represented the selection of the projects that would receive the money, it was decided that all the money collected with lottery would be assigned to the public treasury.

Lottery also started early in France, when in 1776 it was officially established and the French Royal Lottery was created. The French Royal Lottery continued working until 1836, when it was considered bad for the nation and was banned and abolished by the country’s government.

Nowadays, the majority of countries in the world have national lotteries and offer weekly and monthly lottery games. National lotteries usually have special draws on special dates such as Christmas or national holidays.