Lottery Game Offering Improved Odds Debuts : Betting: First drawing for Fantasy Five is today. Its top prize of $250,000 is half that of game it replaces, but chance of winning is better.

The California Lottery holds its first drawing today in a new game of chance that officials hope will help reverse a prolonged decline in ticket sales and renew player interest in the state’s lottery games.

Officials have launched Fantasy Five, a scaled-down version of Lotto, which offers smaller prizes but better odds than previous games. It made its official debut Saturday as the second installment in a new lineup that is the core of Director Sharon Sharp’s strategy to revitalize the lottery.

Patterned after a game that has been enormously successful in Florida, Fantasy Five awards an average top prize of $250,000 and offers odds of 1 in 575,757 to win.

Players choose five numbers from a field of 39. The top prize goes to the player who holds all five of the numbers, which are picked at drawings on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Smaller prizes are awarded players who hold fewer winning numbers.

Fantasy Five replaces Little Lotto, a game that Sharp shut down in December because it was too much like Lotto and was siphoning off players from the big game. Little Lotto awarded a top prize of $500,000 to players who beat odds of 1 in 3.3 million.

“We think Fantasy Five is closer than Little Lotto to what we’ve heard people say they want,” said lottery communications manager Joanne McNabb. “They want a game with a good top prize but they’re willing to trade off the multimillions for significantly better odds.”

In its first two days Fantasy Five chalked up $488,708 in sales. Another 816,356 tickets were distributed to players who took advantage of a special two-week promotion offering a free Fantasy Five play to those who purchased five SuperLotto tickets.

“We figure about 1 million people have played the game so far, and that’s about what we expected at this stage,” McNabb said.

The lottery is launching Fantasy Five at a time when overall sales are continuing to decline. SuperLotto, which replaced Lotto in December, has been showing better sales than its predecessor, but has not produced enough revenue to make up for the loss of Little Lotto and Topper, a game also dropped by Sharp. The state currently offers four basic games, including Fantasy Five.

Halfway through the fiscal year in mid-January, lottery sales had reached $796 million, compared to nearly $1 billion last year. If the current trend continues, lottery officials estimate total sales by the end of the fiscal year in June will be only $1.5 billion, $500,000 below last year’s totals.

To boost sales this year, Sharp has announced she will launch a variety of new games. In addition to Fantasy Five, she plans a daily numbers game, three scratch-off games and a keno-style game.