Encore, Extra and Tag: Canada's Lottery Add-Ons Compared

Lotto Max poster in a Montreal Métro station advertising a jackpot and extra million-dollar prizes — Photo: Benoit Rochon, CC BY-SA 2.5 ca, via Wikimedia Commons

Buy a Lotto Max or Lotto 6/49 ticket almost anywhere in Canada and the clerk or the terminal will ask whether you want the add-on. In Ontario it is ENCORE. In Quebec and in Western Canada it is Extra. In the four Atlantic provinces it is TAG. They look alike on the ticket, a string of digits printed under your main numbers, and they all cost $1. They are not the same game.

Each regional lottery corporation sets its own prize table. The top prizes range from $100,000 to $1 million, the matching rules differ, and the share of each dollar paid back in prizes varies. This guide sets the published tables side by side and works out the averages from the operators' own odds.

How a digit add-on works

The basic mechanic is shared. Your ticket carries a number of six or seven digits. A separate number is drawn. You win by matching digits in position, not by matching a set of numbers in any order like a 6/49 draw.

Right-to-left matching starts with the last digit. Match the last digit only and you win the smallest prize; match the last two, the last three and so on, and the prize climbs.
Left-to-right matching, offered in Ontario and Quebec, does the same from the first digit.
Combination wins, offered only in Ontario, pay when the first few and last few digits both match.

Because each digit runs from 0 to 9, every extra matched digit makes a prize about ten times less likely. That is why the odds columns below step up by roughly a factor of ten per row.

Ontario: ENCORE

OLG sells ENCORE at $1 per play, with 1 to 10 plays per host game. It can be added to DAILY KENO, PICK-2, PICK-3 and PICK-4 (twice daily), LOTTO MAX, LOTTO 6/49, ONTARIO 49, DAILY GRAND and LOTTARIO. OLG describes 22 ways to win, matching "left to right, right to left or a combination of both", with a top prize of $1 million and prizes starting at $2.

ENCORE match	Prize	Odds (1 in)
All 7 digits	$1,000,000	10,000,000
Last 6	$100,000	1,111,111
Last 5	$1,000	111,111
Last 4	$100	11,223
Last 3	$10	1,122
Last 2	$5	112
Last 1	$2	11.22
First 6	$10,000	1,111,111
First 5	$500	123,457
First 4	$50	12,346
First 3	$10	1,235
First 2	$5	123.46

OLG also lists ten combination prizes, from $7 for the first two plus the last digit (1 in 1,235) up to $502 for the first five plus the last digit (1 in 1,111,111). The overall odds of winning any ENCORE prize are 1 in 9.17.

Quebec: Loto-Québec Extra

Loto-Québec's Extra costs $1 per number, with up to 10 numbers on a ticket except Quick Plays. It cannot be played alone. Each number has seven digits from 0 to 9, and Loto-Québec draws seven digits at random, one at a time, to form the winning number. Prizes are paid on the first digits or the last digits. Extra is drawn daily and can be attached to a long list of products, including Lotto Max, Lotto 6/49, Québec Max, Québec 49, Grande Vie, Banco, Astro, Triplex, La Quotidienne, Tout ou rien and Lotto Poker.

Extra match	Prize	Odds (1 in)
Complete number (7 digits)	$1,000,000	10,000,000
Last 6	$25,000	1,111,111
Last 5	$500	111,111
Last 4	$50	11,111
Last 3	$20	1,111
Last 2	$5	111
Last digit	$2	11
First 6	$10,000	1,111,111
First 5	$500	111,111
First 4	$50	11,111
First 3	$20	1,111
First 2	$5	111

Loto-Québec states the $1,000,000 grand prize is divisible, gives overall odds of 1 in 9.1 and publishes a theoretical payout rate of 45.55%. The comparison with Ontario is instructive: the jackpot and its odds are identical, but the last-six prize is $25,000 in Quebec against $100,000 in Ontario, and Quebec has no combination prizes.

Prairies and territories: WCLC Extra

The Western Canada Lottery Corporation, which serves Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories, also calls its add-on EXTRA, but the rules differ. It costs $1 per number per draw, the number has seven digits, and you match only in exact order from the right-hand side. There is no left-to-right prize.

WCLC ties the number of EXTRA plays to the size of the main purchase: one EXTRA for every $3 of Daily Grand, $5 of Lotto Max, $3 of Lotto 6/49, $2 of Western Max, $1 of Western 649 or $3 of Lightning Lotto, and one per selection for PICK games. EXTRA is drawn daily, with sales closing at 10:30 pm ET or the earlier provincial cut-off.

Match (from the right)	Prize	Odds (approx. 1 in)
All 7	$250,000	6,000,000
Last 6	$100,000	1,200,000
Last 5	$1,000	111,111
Last 4	$100	11,111
Last 3	$50	1,111
Last 2	$10	111
Last digit	$2	11

WCLC gives overall odds of approximately 1 in 10 and labels all its odds as approximate. Note the top-prize odds of 1 in 6,000,000 rather than 1 in 10,000,000: the published odds are WCLC's, and they should be read as such rather than recalculated from the digit count.

Atlantic Canada: TAG

Atlantic Lottery's add-on is TAG, a six-digit number at $1 per play, up to 10 times on one ticket. According to the LotteryGuru listing, it can be added to Lotto 6/49, Lotto Max, Daily Grand, Poker Lotto, Atlantic 49, Bucko, Keno Atlantic, Lotto 4, Salsa Bingo and Hit or Miss, and it is drawn nightly. The official Atlantic Lottery site could not be reached when this guide was prepared, so the table below is the one published by that results service.

TAG match	Prize	Odds (1 in)
All 6	$100,000	600,000
Last 5	$1,000	120,000
Last 4	$100	11,111
Last 3	$20	1,111
Last 2	$10	111
Last digit	$2	11

The overall odds listed are 1 in 10. With one digit fewer than ENCORE or Extra, TAG trades a smaller top prize for a jackpot that is many times more likely to hit.

British Columbia: a different Extra

BCLC also sells an add-on called Extra, but it does not follow the digit model. Instead of a seven-digit string, an Extra play gives four numbers, which World Casino Directory describes as drawn from 1 to 99, at $1 per play. Matching all four pays $500,000. Global News, reporting a B.C. winner, gave the odds of matching four out of four as one in 3,764,376.

BCLC's own prize page could not be retrieved for this guide, so the lower tiers and the overall odds are left out here rather than taken from secondary reports. If you play in B.C., check the full table on the ticket back or at the retailer.

What a $1 add-on returns on average

Expected value is the sum, over every prize, of the prize times its probability. It does not tell you what will happen on one ticket. It tells you what each dollar returns across a very large number of plays. Using only the published tables above:

Add-on	Average return per $1	Of which top prize	Chance of any prize
ENCORE (Ontario)	about $0.51	$0.10	1 in 9.17
Extra (Quebec)	about $0.46	$0.10	1 in 9.1
EXTRA (WCLC)	about $0.46	about $0.04	about 1 in 10
TAG (Atlantic, aggregator table)	about $0.47	about $0.17	1 in 10

The Quebec figure computed from the table matches Loto-Québec's own stated payout rate of 45.55%, which is a useful check that the method is sound. The ENCORE figure adds the ten combination prizes listed by OLG; with them, ENCORE comes out slightly ahead of the others on paper. Rounded odds in the operators' tables mean every figure is approximate to about a cent.

Two practical readings follow:

Most of the return sits in the small prizes. In every version, the $2, $5 and $10 tiers do the bulk of the work. The jackpot contributes a dime or less per dollar in Ontario, Quebec and the West.
The add-on is not cheaper than the main game. Regional 6/49-style games pay back roughly half of each dollar too. The add-on is another bet with a similar long-run cost, not a discount on the main ticket.

Side by side

Feature	ENCORE	Extra (QC)	EXTRA (WCLC)	TAG
Digits	7	7	7	6
Matching	Both ends plus combinations	Both ends	Right to left only	Right to left
Top prize	$1,000,000	$1,000,000	$250,000	$100,000
Last-6 prize	$100,000	$25,000	$100,000	n/a
Plays per ticket	1 to 10 per host game	Up to 10	Tied to main purchase	Up to 10

Before you say yes at the counter

The add-on is a small, quick decision repeated on every ticket, which is exactly why it adds up. Ten plays of ENCORE on one host game is $10, on top of the main ticket. The prompt at the terminal is designed to make yes the easy answer; our piece on the psychology of gambling explains why near-misses, such as matching five of seven digits from the wrong end, feel more meaningful than they are.

Lottery tickets in Canada are sold to adults: 19 and over in most provinces, 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec. For the main draw games these add-ons attach to, see our guide to Canadian lotteries; for another daily numbers game with a published paytable, see how keno works. If lottery spending is creeping up, the limit-setting tools on our responsible gaming page apply here too.

Questions readers ask

Is ENCORE the same as Extra?

They use the same basic idea, a seven-digit number matched in position, but the prize tables differ. ENCORE in Ontario adds left-to-right and combination prizes and pays $100,000 for the last six digits; Loto-Québec's Extra pays $25,000 for the last six; WCLC's EXTRA matches only from the right and has a $250,000 top prize.

What are the odds of winning the add-on jackpot?

OLG and Loto-Québec both publish 1 in 10,000,000 for all seven digits. WCLC lists approximately 1 in 6,000,000 for its $250,000 prize. The TAG table published by LotteryGuru gives 1 in 600,000 for $100,000, and BC's four-number Extra was reported at one in 3,764,376 for $500,000.

How much of each dollar does the add-on pay back?

Loto-Québec publishes a theoretical payout rate of 45.55% for Extra. Working from the published tables, ENCORE returns about 51 cents per dollar, WCLC EXTRA about 46 cents and TAG about 47 cents, all approximate.

Can I buy the add-on on its own?

Loto-Québec states that Extra cannot be played alone and is always linked to another product. The other versions are also sold as add-ons to a host game.

Why is BC's Extra different?

BCLC's Extra gives four numbers rather than a string of digits, with a $500,000 top prize for matching all four. It is a different game that shares the name used elsewhere in Western Canada.