By SCOTT McFETRIDGE (Associated Press)
The Powerball lottery will tie a previous record on Saturday night by going more than three months without a jackpot winner.
This streak of not having a winner has allowed the top Powerball prize to reach $1.23 billion, making it the 8th largest in U.S. lottery history. This shows that the game is working as intended, with difficult odds leading to a huge jackpot that encourages people to spend $2 on a ticket.
This means that no one should expect to match all six numbers and become rich, although it's probable that someone will eventually win.
The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot was on New Year’s Day, when a player in Michigan won $842.4 million.
Since then, there have been 40 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner. The 41st on Saturday night will tie the record for most drawings, set twice before in 2022 and 2021.
The lack of winners is not a coincidence. Lottery officials set the odds at 1 in 292.2 million in the hope that the jackpot will grow with each of the three weekly drawings, attracting more people to play.
The odds used to be better at 1 in 175 million, but were made tougher in 2015 to create the massive jackpots. Lottery officials also made it easier to win smaller prizes at that time, and they point out that the overall odds of winning something are about 1 in 25.
It's difficult to understand what odds of 1 in 292.2 million mean.
One way to visualize it is to imagine the roughly 322 million people who can buy Powerball tickets – five states don't participate. If each person bought one ticket, you would expect one person to win and hundreds of millions of people to lose.
In another context, the odds of winning the jackpot are a little worse than flipping a coin and getting heads 28 times in a row, according to Andrew Swift, a mathematics professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.
Of all the people who bought lottery tickets for the last drawing on Wednesday night, only 22.6% of the 292.2 million possible number combinations were chosen, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. This means that 77.4% of number combinations were not chosen, explaining why people rarely win the jackpot.
Keep in mind, the odds of an individual ticket winning never change, but as more people play, more number combinations will be chosen and the odds of someone winning increase.
Despite the poor odds, Powerball's chances are slightly better than Mega Millions, another nationwide lottery game, which has jackpot odds of 1 in 302.6 million. Furthermore, someone recently won a $1.13 billion Mega Millions prize.
Undoubtedly, the Powerball jackpot is a significant amount of money, but it's also less than you might expect.
This is because while officials emphasize the $1.23 billion prize, that is for a single winner who decides to receive payments over 29 years through an annuity, with an initial payment and subsequent annual payments. Winners almost always choose to receive a lump-sum payment, which for Saturday night’s drawing would be an estimated $595.1 million.
No matter how winners choose to get their money, a large portion would be taken out for taxes, but the exact amount would depend on the winner's other money and whether their state taxes lottery prizes. Just keep in mind that the highest federal tax rate is 37%, so a significant part of the winnings would be sent to the government.
