16, 19, 32, 34, 57. If you’d guessed those numbers and Powerball 13, you’d be $900 million richer. No one did though, so the prize has now been increased to $1.3 billion for Wednesday’s jackpot.
According to the Associated Press, this is the largest prize ever on record. This will be the first time a U.S. lottery enters the billion-dollar range. The previous record was a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in 2012.
Or it might not be your chance. According to official estimates, 75% of all official number combinations had been used but none were winners. This means that the winning ticket was in that final 25%.
There are almost 300,000 different combinations that are possible, so the odds of you getting the one that’s going to win you that jackpot are incredibly slim.
Spain’s Christmas lottery, appropriately named El Gordo, “The Fat One,” is often called the world’s biggest lottery. last month, it was expected to hand out €2.2 billion-$2.4 billion in prizes. But that money is split among many winners, with the top prize capped at €4 million.
Even if a solo Powerball winner chooses the lump-sum option (instead of having the prize paid out over 29 years), that person will get an estimated $806 million.
But there are caveats: If multiple people win, they’ll split the jackpot between them. And taxes would have to be levied to all winnings.
It’s likely the jackpot for Wednesday’s drawing could rise. The initial estimate for the last one was $675 million, but rose to $700 million, then $800 million, then $900 million by Saturday night. As more people buy tickets, the prize increases.
It’s important to remember that your chances of winning are infinitely small. We’re talking 1 in 292,201,338. My advice would be to spend your $2 on something more useful. Like chocolate.
Featured image by Arturo Pardavila III, available under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-Sharealike license.
