Powerball announces winning numbers in $900M jackpot

Within about an hour of the 1o:59 p.m. drawing, lottery officials had determined that there were no jackpot winners, extending the streak and pushing the already record breaking jackpot to a new tier.

Back on December 17, 2013, the winning $648 million Mega Millions jackpot was revised by an additional $12 million (up from the announced $636 million the night of the draw) due to a late spike in sales.

The odds of winning are 1 in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the draw.

The jackpot started at $40 million on November 4 and has been growing since then because there have been no big winners for the twice-weekly jackpots. The odds of nailing it are around 1 in 292 million.

Saturday’s prize shatters the previous record for a United States lottery jackpot of US$656 million, scooped up by three winning tickets in North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas in March 2012.

By MARGERY BECK Associated Press No ticket matched all six Powerball numbers following the drawing for a record jackpot of almost $950 million, lottery officials said early Sunday, boosting the expected… Another employee stood at the newsstand’s entrance offering $10 worth of tickets on one page. As anticipated the Powerball jackpot is now more than $1 billion. “You can throw out the statistics”, said Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery.

“I’m going insane! I can’t take it anymore!” she said, burying her face in her hands but giggling uncontrollably as she turned to a line of customers. Lottery officials added that over $1 billion in Powerball tickets have been sold so far across the country.

Frenzied ticket-buying for a shot at the USA’s largest lottery prize ever pushed the Powerball jackpot to $900 million hours before Saturday night’s drawing. The holder of the $1-million ticket has 182 days to come forward.

“It doesn’t sound so bad… but you would be at it for an eternity”, Professor Miecznikowski said. But as lottery officials often note, you have no chance of winning if you don’t buy a ticket.

“It looks like a chance, you know a chance to win”, said Kyle Collins.

“A big plot of land somewhere, so my family, we can all live on the land, we can build our own homes and do fun stuff”.

Powerball is played right across the U.S. in 44 states, Washington and two USA territories.

Mr Elias admitted to buying a ticket for himself, something he said he had never done before.