Powerball jackpot increases again to $1.5 billion on strong sales

It’s the first time a US lottery jackpot has been in the billions.

It started out at $40 million on November 4 and is played twice a week.

Hoosier Lottery officials call the jackpot “unprecedented”. Plus, if someone else matched the winning numbers, too, you’d have to split the prize. But this all largely misses the more important fact: The chances of winning are incredibly remote, so it makes little difference whether you’d have to share the money.

There are two reasons why your expected loss wouldn’t decrease with every additional Powerball ticket that you purchase: Your odds of winning don’t meaningfully improve, and the size of the pot doesn’t increase enough by buying 10, 100 or even 1,000 tickets. Officials don’t track which numbers are most popular because so many are randomly generated.

A victor would have the option of being paid $1.5 billion through annual payments over 29 years or opting for one smaller cash payment. Those whose states don’t have the Powerball are Alabama, Mississippi, Alaska, Utah, Nevada and Hawaii.

“People are flocking over from those states to stand in line and buy lottery tickets”, he said.

“Biggest jackpot in the history of the world. It appears that people are voting with their pocketbooks on this one”.

The Powerball jackpot keeps growing, and so does the cut that would go to Uncle Sam if there is a victor for the now $1.5 billion Powerball jackpot on Wednesday.

If Wednesday’s jackpot is won by a Pennsylvania player, it would become the state’s 20th multi-state jackpot win.

Iowa Lottery has a similar problem with some billboards. The overall chance of winning a prize is 1 in 24.87.

In addition to the educational beneficiaries, players have won more than $8.7 billion in prizes and lottery retailer partners have earned more than $896 million in retailer commissions. The staggering $1.4 billion Powerball jackpot number on Wednesday has captured a great deal of attention nationwide.

“We are very excited about this, and Lottoland is setting the pace in opening up winning customer opportunities right around the world”, Lottoland spokesman Luke Brill said. “I hope someone who bought a ticket at my store wins, but what would you do with all that money?”