BATON ROUGE- The Louisiana Lottery has announced that its flagship game will be upgraded to offer starting jackpots of $500,000. The first drawing will be on August 5.

Doubling the starting jackpot mark, this is the fourth time the Lotto has changed in the game's 28-year history.

“There will be more to love about Lotto this summer with more frequent $1 million-plus jackpots that our loyal Lotto players enjoy,” Lottery President Rose Hudson said. “Our players have spoken, and we listened with a Louisiana game that is still just a dollar.”

To construct larger starting jackpots, the new design will require game players to select six numbers out of 42, bumping up the overall odds of winning to 1 in 34.4. Previously, the matrix was six of 40 with overall odds of one in 30.

Due to the matrix change, the Lottery will temporarily suspend the multi-draw option to prevent future purchases that eclipse the new version's sale date of Aug 2. On that date, multi-draw will return to full functionality under the new rules. The multi-draw option allows customers to purchase tickets for a select number of future drawings. 

For more information and rules, visit the Louisiana Lottery's website.