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[h=4]Ticket to paradise: Powerball jackpot could hit $1.3B[/h]No ticket matched all six Powerball numbers following Saturday night’s drawing for a record jackpot of nearly $950 million.
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Lofty dreams of becoming a billionaire are budding for Powerball players after nobody won Saturday's massive jackpot. VPC
A customer shows his tickets for the multi-state Powerball lottery jackpot, the largest in U.S. history, at a convenience store in Madison, Ga., on Jan. 8, 2016.(Photo: EPA)
The Powerball lottery is getting fatter – climbing to an estimated $1.3 billion jackpot by the next drawing Wednesday – but hasn’t matched "El Gordo" in Europe.
Nobody matched the winning numbers Saturday of 16-19-32-34-57 and Powerball number 13.
No shame in that. The odds of winning the largest prize in U.S. lottery history were one in 292.2 million.
But that’s a simple calculation about how many combinations of numbers there are – so the odds don’t get any worse as more people participate and the jackpot continues to grow.
Scott Norris, an assistant professor of mathematics at Southern Methodist University, says your tiny odds improve a bit if you let the computer pick your numbers rather than choosing them yourself.
Patti McFadden of Fort Myers, a lottery-playing veteran, said before Saturday's drawing that she was visiting multiple Powerball sellers to improve her chances.
“So far I’ve purchased 10 tickets,” McFadden said. “I’ll probably get a few more before the drawing.”
Anndrea Smith, 30, the manager of Bucky's gas station and convenience store in Omaha, Neb., told The Associated Press that she sold about $5,000 worth of tickets Saturday -- including a few to herself. That total compares to a typical $1,200 sold on a Friday, she said.
"I bought four yesterday, and I usually never buy any," Smith said.
The latest estimate of $1.3 billion would be twice as large as the biggest previous U.S. lottery prize from March 30, 2012, when Mega Millions paid $656 million for three tickets from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland. The total would also more than double the $590.5 million that Powerball paid May 18, 2013, for one ticket in Florida.
But the latest Powerball prize would still be dwarfed by Spain’s Christmas lottery nicknamed “El Gordo,” or “the fat one,” that distributed $2.4 billion last month.
Despite the slim odds of winning, Powerball is generating frenzied sales of the $2 tickets for the Wednesday drawing.
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And the giant jackpot is just what officials with the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs the Powerball game, were hoping for when they adjusted the odds last fall. (Previously, it was about one in 175 million.)
The whopping new jackpot started out Nov. 4 at a mere $40 million. Drawing after drawing, there has been no winner<span style="color: Red;">*</span>— and the pot, which has rolled over 18 times,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>has swollen to eye-popping levels. A winner Saturday night would have been a record; the estimated pot for Wednesday's drawing has blown past that.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The previous record<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Powerball of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>$590.5 million was<span style="color: Red;">*</span>won by a single player in Florida in 2013.
The U.S. saw sales of $277 million on Friday alone and more than $400 million were expected Saturday, according to Gary Grief, the executive director of the Texas Lottery, the Associated Press reported.
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Winners of the top prize<span style="color: Red;">*</span>are paid in 30 annual installments or as a one-time, lump sum payment. The lump sum for Wednesday's drawing is estimated at $806 million.
The safe option to avoid spending all the money or falling into an investment mishap would be to take the annuity, according to Olivia Mitchell, a professor of insurance and risk management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Powerball is played in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Contributing: Associated Press
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