Winning Palace review: bets on state lottery draws at about a 10 percent edge, and a bonus that costs more than it gives

A bet on the draw, not a ticket

Winning Palace takes bets on the results of US state lottery draws: Pick 2, Pick 3, Pick 4 and Pick 5. It isn't a lottery and it doesn't sell tickets. Its terms put it plainly: "Winning Palace offers wagers on lottery results. You are not acquiring an interest in an official prize pool, or contracting with the underlying lottery organizer. Any valid payout is owed by Winning Palace under its published payout terms."

Read that twice. Your state lottery runs the draw and pays its own Pick games itself. Here the draw only settles a bet between you and the book. If Winning Palace doesn't pay, the lottery owes you nothing. Our US lottery pages cover the state games, and our lottery reviews cover the official lotteries' own apps and shops.

The terms are governed by the laws and courts of Anjouan. No page I read gives a licence number or a company name. (A book that tells you whose law applies but not whose name is on the door has told you half of it.)

What the book keeps

The payouts page quotes every bet as "X:1". Here is the regular table against your chance of winning:

A Pick 3 straight hits once in 1,000 and pays 900:1, so over time the book keeps about 10 cents of every dollar (9.9 or 10, depending on whether the 900 includes your stake). Every other line gives the same answer. Six ways at 150:1 is 900 in 1,000, and twenty-four ways at 375:1 is 9,000 in 10,000. Someone priced the whole board to one margin.

So no number and no box is better value than another, and you can play the ones you like. The dime comes off every dollar on every draw, however much you play. The house edge guide and the lottery odds guide show how that adds up.

A second table, Fireball, pays exactly half the regular figures: Pick 3 straight at 450:1, Pick 4 straight at 4,500:1. The page doesn't explain Fireball. On the same 1-in-1,000 chance, 450:1 would leave the book about 55 cents of every dollar. Fireball may add ways to win, but nothing I read says how, and I don't bet a price I can't work out.

When you win

The terms are better here than I expected: "We will not introduce a lower payout limit after acceptance or cancel a valid wager merely because it wins." A bet placed after the cutoff, or after the result is public, is void win or lose, which is fair. Once a bet is accepted, you can't cancel it.

The book's worry is one number carrying too much money, because a Pick 4 straight that hits pays 9,000 times the stake. So it keeps the right to "reject submissions, close selections or reduce future acceptance limits to manage exposure". I'd do the same in its shoes. What I don't like is that no page I read publishes a maximum bet or payout per number, and limits "apply only as disclosed before acceptance". Read the limit on screen before you confirm, and ask support first if you're betting more than a few dollars a number.

Getting paid

Withdrawals go by crypto from $25, up to $5,000 a day, or by Push to Card and PayPal from $50, up to $1,000 a day. Deposits start at $10, with no fees.

Every request is reviewed by hand. The FAQ says a request made in business hours, with everything in order, takes 27 minutes on average, and up to one business day if they want more checks. You need a completed profile and a confirmed email. They may also ask for ID, proof of age and address, your payment method and your source of funds. We haven't run a withdrawal through it, so the 27 minutes is their number.

Now take a good draw. About $2.22 on a Pick 4 straight at 9,000:1 wins about $20,000. By crypto at $5,000 a day, that takes four days to get out. By card or PayPal at $1,000 a day, it takes twenty. Pick the method before you play.

A pending withdrawal can be cancelled, and "you may receive an additional Free Play bonus for staying active." That's the book paying you to leave your money on its side of the counter. I'd let it go through. The withdrawals guide has the questions to ask first.

The bonus

The welcome offer is 100% of your first deposit in Free Play, up to $500, once per account, with no minimum deposit. The rollover is 12 times deposit plus bonus, and your deposit has to stay in the account until it's met. Their own example is $100 plus $100, which means $2,400 of wagering. At about 10 percent, $2,400 of Pick bets costs around $240 on average to clear $100 of Free Play. At the top of the offer, $12,000 of wagering costs about $1,200 to clear $500. There's "no promotion-specific maximum withdrawal limit", which is fair, but the cost of getting there is the problem.

The 40% reload, up to $400 at 10x, is the same story on a smaller scale. A $100 deposit plus $40 means $1,400 of wagering and about $140 of expected cost for $40. I'd skip both and keep my own money free to withdraw. The bonuses guide shows how to price an offer.

Who it suits

It suits a player who likes his Pick 3 and Pick 4 numbers, bets a few dollars a draw and funds in crypto. It doesn't suit anyone who thinks he's holding a lottery ticket.

You must be 18, or older where the local minimum is higher. Costa Rica, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Lebanon are restricted. The terms warn that "Website availability doesn't guarantee it's legal in your location", so check the rules where you live. There's a time out through Player Services and a self-exclusion that "cannot be reversed", with links to Gamblers Anonymous and Gambling Therapy. Every dollar here costs about a dime over time, so decide what the week can cost before the first draw. The responsible gambling page says where to get help.