May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

With the announcement of four upcoming bottle lotteries, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the previous bottle lotteries and see what the changes of actually winning the right to purchase a bottle were. I started this site in the autumn of 2018 so we'll go back to all the lotteries where I have data. 

The first lottery I wrote about was the 2018 Holiday Bottle Lottery which was actually two lotteries... the first was for the Pappy family of bourbons and the second for hard to find Buffalo Trace bottles. 

For the Pappy lottery, the state had 73,443 entries for 359 bottles for a win rate of a whopping 0.49%. The Buffalo Trace lottery was slightly better with 66,659 entries for 424 bottles for a win chance of 0.64%... not great. 

The first lottery in 2019 was for Eagle Rare and O.F.C. bottles in the $2000+ range... this lottery had 8,206 for 8 bottles... or a win rate of 0.1%.

The final lottery in 2019 was the 2019 Holiday Bottle Lottery. Like the previous year, this was actually two lotteries. When I reached out, the State didn't provide numbers for each lottery, but rather a generic number of 65,389 entries for around 900 bottles.... which puts your odds at 1.39%, but realistically, it was two lotteries with 65,389 entries and around 450 bottles for each which puts your odds around 0.69%. 

2020 brought an increase in lotteries due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The first lottery kicked off in May with the Weller Full Proof lottery. This had 36,940 entries and 2001 bottles, for a win percentage of 5.4%. Easily the highest since I've been tracking. 

The second lottery of 2020 was for Weller 12 Year in August. This lottery had a similar number of entries of 36,423 with 1665 bottles available for a 4.57% chance. 

Earlier this week, the State announced four lotteries over the next four weeks. As always, I'll be posting updates and reminders throughout the month and I hope fans of the site all win!

Year	Lottery	Entries	Bottles	Chance of winning
2018	Pappy Holiday	73443	359	0.49%
2018	Buffalo Trace Holiday	66659	424	0.64%
2019	O.F.C. (1993 Vintage)/Double Eagle Very Rare	8206	8	0.10%
2019	Pappy Holiday	65389	450	0.69%
2019	Buffalo Trace Holiday	65389	450	0.69%
2020	Weller Full Proof	36940	2001	5.42%
2020	Weller 12 Year	36423	1665	4.57%