No Powerball victor, so jackpot may grow to $1.3 billion

In case you still haven’t checked your tickets from Saturday’s drawing, the numbers were: 16-19-32-34-57 and Powerball 13.

By buying every combination, you’d guarantee yourself a victory, but you’d have just a 22 percent chance of buying the only winning ticket and keeping that jackpot all to yourself, according to Victor Matheson, professor of economics and accounting at the College of the Holy Cross in MA.

Lottery fever is growing nationwide as the Powerball jackpot is now at an estimated $1.3 billion.

Fourteen Powerball players in 14 states won $1 million each by correctly having the five numbers without the Powerball. While you’d make back some of your investment on smaller prizes paid for matching three, four or five numbers plus the Powerball, chances are it still isn’t a good bet. However, the average Iowa Powerball purchase on Saturday remained about $7, or 3 to 4 plays per ticket, according to lottery officials. Cripe said 75% of all 292.2 million combinations were bought before Saturday’s drawing.

On Saturday night’s drawing, no one had a ticket with all the numbers for the Powerball drawing.

In the meantime, the cash option – right now – for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing is $868 million.

Sonja Peterson of Minneapolis said she never buys Powerball tickets, but on Saturday, she bought two with random numbers at Bobby & Steve’s Auto World gas station – one for her, one for her boyfriend.

“If I don’t drop dead of a heart attack, I’ll finish the work I’m doing now and maybe take a vacation”, he said.

“We urge all our players to check their tickets and, of course, we have plenty of champagne on ice ready to welcome these winners into the National Lottery millionaires club”. A sale of a single $2 Powerball ticket raises about 76 cents for education.

People living in 44 states, as well as in the District of Columbia, the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico are eligible to play Powerball.

The odds to win are 1 in 292.2 million. With nearly unimaginable riches at stake, many Americans who normally shun lotteries joined the long lines of people buying tickets at retail stores across the country.

It hit $700 million on Thursday after nobody won on Wednesday night – the 18th drawing without a victor.