The estimated jackpot for tonight’s Powerball lottery drawing rose to $700 million on Tuesday, making it the second biggest in U.S. history.
The total refers to the sum of 30 payments over 29 years in the annuity option, but most winners choose to collect the jackpot all at once. The current cash prize is $443.3 million, and federal income taxes will siphon off a quarter of the prize.
So what are your chances? The odds of winning the massive prize are 1 in 292.2 million. Tom Rietz, a professor at the University of Iowa who researches probabilities, notes that a player’s chance of winning is therefore roughly like taking the prize while all of the other 324 million U.S. residents lose.
In the spirit of things, we’ve compiled a few facts about the Powerball game that not many people know.
The biggest jackpot in history wasn’t won by a single ticket.
You should know by now that the biggest jackpot in lottery history was broken by Powerball last year. It reached a whopping $1.6 billion on the 13th of January. The winning numbers belonged to three winners who split the jackpot. Each lucky ticket holder walked away with $528.8 million.
The winner of the biggest single-handed Powerball win was Gloria Mackenzie, who in May 2013 cracked a jackpot of $590.5 million all to herself.
It isn’t impossible to enter all the possible winning combinations.
If you want to really make sure you win the Powerball jackpot, simply enter all the statistically possible winnings combinations. According to CNN Money, you would have to spend approximately $584 million to ensure you hit the jackpot.
US Powerball draws are monitored by heavy security.
Can players trust that everything runs fairly and smoothly with Powerball draws? The short answer is yes.
During the draws, several officials from the lottery organization are present. An independent auditor, as well as a security officer, are also in the room along with many security cameras. The drums with the lotto balls are stored in a double-locked and alarm-secured safe. The ballots are sealed after the drawing by the inspector and also stored in a secure safe. All the equipment is regularly checked according to the technician’s specifications. The balls and drums are also maintained and tested on a regular basis.
The Powerball lottery revenue doesn’t work the way you think it does.
Of the money made from lottery tickets, 50 percent goes toward paying winners in the various prize divisions, 40 percent to good causes and charity, and 10 percent to the retailer who sold the winning lottery ticket.
There were once 110 big winners in a single draw.
On March 30, 2005, in the second prize division, there were a staggering 110 people with the right combination of numbers. Usually, there are no more than five winning players in this division.
Powerball operators subsequently conducted an investigation, and it turned out that 110 players entered the lucky numbers of a fortune cookie made by a company in Long Island, New York. The numbers in the fortune cookie were 22-28-32-33-39 and 40. Except for 40, all the lucky numbers matched theirs. In all, 89 players received $100,000, and 21 received $500,000.
