$900 Million Powerball Jackpot Is Record-Setting, Drawing Saturday Night

The latest Powerball prize dwarfs the previous jackpot record of $564.1 million, becoming the largest in USA history, including Mega Millions and all other multi-state games.

Lottery players in NY and around the country are watching the $900 million Powerball jackpot.

Gary Diaz of Lincoln said he’s bought one or two Powerball tickets every week since a group of his co-workers won a lottery jackpot in 2004.

In the Powerball lottery, five white balls are drawn from a drum of 69 balls, and one red one is pulled from a drum with 26.

A sign shows the estimated jackpot for this Saturday’s Powerball lottery at the CA lotto store in San Bernardino County, California.

If no player hit all six numbers, the payout to Wednesday’s drawing is expect to hit $1.3 billion, Traverso said.

The massive $800 million payoff ballooned again to reach $900 million as New Yorkers spent more than $1 million an hour on ticket sales.

The probabilities of winning the prize now stand at 1 in 292.2 million, according the Powerball Web site, but the unfavorable odds didn’t stop Americans from spending around $277 million on the lottery this Friday.

Tickets cost $2 each. For some comparison, your chance of being struck by lightning in a year is about one in 960,000.

If you chose to take the cash and run it’s $558 million.

The drawing is just before 11 p.m. and is televised locally on WGAL Channel 8 at 11:20.

“I don’t want to get rich”, said Samuel, who chose numbers using relatives’ birth dates and her own.

Since Nov. 4, the Powerball jackpot has grown from its $40 million starting point as no one has won the jackpot. But as lottery officials often note, you have no chance of winning if you don’t buy a ticket.

Another big advantage of the annuity versus the lump sum – besides the fact that you’ll collect millions of dollars more – is that you can’t blow all the winnings as fast.

Powerball is played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.