Powerball jackpot jumps to $900 million hours before drawing

The Powerball drawing is just before 11PM Saturday night and stores will stop selling them about an hour before that. The cash option for the jackpot is $428.4 million.

The previous record for a lottery was a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot won in March 2012. There have now been 18 straight Powerball drawings without a victor, dating back to November 7. “Playing the lottery is a bad idea, financially speaking”, Time notes. One hopeful thought: Scott A. Norris, an assistant professor of mathematics at Southern Methodist University, says your tiny odds improve a bit if you let the computer pick your numbers rather than choosing yourself.

Nobody won the Powerball jackpot on Wednesday, driving the lottery’s grand prize up to the highest in the history of the game, and fueling the country’s lottery fever more than ever. You should probably read the whole explainer to understand. ABC also spoke to a lottery expert who advised that people should buy as many tickets as they can afford, something the AP’s expert, the American Statistical Association’s Ron Wasserstein, would not agree with.

Have you noticed that the chance of winning the Powerball Jackpot at 292-million to one, is actually smaller than the $800-million in the jackpot.

David Ridenour has boxes of losing lottery tickets stashed away at home.

The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is 1 in about 293 million, according to the Powerball website. And the top ten biggest U.S. Lottery jackpots have all happened within the last three years.

Sales met or surpassed that weekly mark on Thursday and Friday, she said.

With just a day remaining before the biggest lottery jackpot drawing in US history, fewer than two-thirds of all Powerball number combinations have been purchased, a California State Lottery official said Friday.

The prize is a fraction of the overall Powerball jackpot, but the $1 million victor was pleased with his luck.