Channel an eager Angelica, Peggy, and Eliza as you try for $10 Hamilton tickets. (Photo by Joan Marcus)

Sure, Hamilton is good, but is it refinance-your-student-loans good? Plenty of people who have already bought pricey tickets to the Kennedy Center’s production—which opens today—would say yes, but for the rest of us, there’s the #Ham4Ham lottery (a feature borrowed from the Broadway production), which offers a shot at $10 tickets. Here’s what you need to know to snag tickets—now just keep your eyes on your phone from now until the Kennedy Center’s show closes September 16.

Where is the lottery held? Please don’t tell me I need to stand outside.
Oh god, no. Reflect on how miserable D.C. summers must have been for Alexander Hamilton in the pre-air conditioning days while you download the official Hamilton app (you can also just do this on the desktop site, but you’ll miss out on trivia and a Hamilton podcast). There you’ll enter your name, email address, phone number, and contact information, and indicate whether you want one or two tickets.

I just enter once and then it’s done for the whole run, right?
Nice try. The lottery for each performance opens at 11 a.m. two days before the show and closes at 9 a.m. the day before the show; winners are contacted two hours later. For example, to try for tickets to Thursday’s show, enter the lottery anytime between 11 a.m. on Tuesday and 9 a.m. on Wednesday. You’ll find out whether you’ve won at 11 a.m. Wednesday via text or email. You can enter once each day. There are 40 tickets for each performance up for grabs (out of a total of 2,364).

How are the winners picked?
It’s a completely randomized lottery—so bribing someone at the Kennedy Center won’t help you here.

What happens if I win?
Freak out. Then you’ll receive a link to purchase your $10 tickets online. Buy them real quick—the tickets will be given away if you haven’t bought them by 4 p.m. the day prior to the performance. You’ll pick up the physical tickets (with your ID) at will call. By the way, don’t even THINK about reselling them and having someone else pick them up—if you do, the tickets will be voided.

Where will my seats be?
Though the fine print in the Hamilton app and on the site stipulates that the tickets “may be anywhere in the theater,” the Kennedy Center tells DCist all the lottery seats for D.C. shows are located in the orchestra section.

Any other rules I should know about?
You must be 18 years or older to enter the lottery.

This is too much work. Can’t I just buy tickets the old-fashioned way?
Not willing to wait for it, huh? (Sorry.) A few tickets still remain at the Kennedy Center site—but chances are good you’ll need to shell out at least $150 for one, and your seats likely won’t be great. You can also try your luck with Vivid Seats or StubHub, where tickets tend to range from about $250-$750. Be warned: The Kennedy Center is very careful to note that they can’t help you out if you get scammed.

This post has been updated.