Powerball Lottery Jackpot Betting Odds for Wednesday’s Drawing

Written by Jim Murphy

–The nationwide Powerball Lottery Jackpot now stands at $650 million.

–Powerball games are available in 44 US states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

–The odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million

No winning tickets were sold for Saturday night’s ‘Powerball’ lottery jackpot drawing so the big jackpot ($535 million) rolls over to a bigger jackpot. The jackpot now stands at $650 million which is either the second or third largest in history depending on where you get the news.

If you ever need an emphatic understanding of why so few people are able to make money gambling the lottery will give it to you. The math behind the lottery is fairly simple. A reasonably bright high school student could explain the long odds and point out the mistakes people make playing the lottery such as buying hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars worth of tickets hoping to win a jackpot. One of the more amusing byproducts of the massive media hype surrounding the lottery is the appearance of ‘experts’ offering ‘lottery tips’ for would be jackpot winners. More often than not, these are former jackpot winners who by virtue of their good fortune are now treated like experts on math and probability. I have heard one–and only one–good piece of advice for playing these big money Powerball jackpots: use the computer generated ‘Quick Draw’ to pick your Powerball numbers. The logic here is sound since computers are better than humans at selecting truly ‘random numbers’.

Every other tip, ‘strategy’ and/or conventional wisdom you’ll hear from lottery players is wrong. Buying a whole bunch of tickets for a big jackpot is the classic one. You might increase your chances of winning but by so little that it doesn’t really matter. You have almost zero chance to win a Powerball jackpot. Buying another ticket doesn’t ‘double your chances’ since the product of multiplying ‘almost zero’ and ‘almost zero’ is still ‘almost zero’. Using the same set of numbers over and over again also doesn’t matter, nor does using your kid’s birthday or any other ‘lucky number’. A random number generator doesn’t care about any of that.

‘THEY DECIDE WHERE AND WHEN THE JACKPOT IS HIT’

I’m all for a good conspiracy theory but this doesn’t qualify as ‘good’. I overheard this line “They decide where and when the jackpot is hit” at the grocery store on Sunday afternoon from a middle aged gentleman ‘explaining’ to his female companion why he doesn’t buy into the Powerball hype. Nice try–I guess he deserves partial credit for coming to the right conclusion for the wrong reason. The outfit behind Powerball (known as the ‘Multi-State Lottery Association’) doesn’t need to ‘work’ the outcome of the lottery. The math does it for them. When you’re offering odds of 292 million to 1 you don’t need to manipulate the outcome to make it harder for the ‘average Joe’ to win. The Powerball website does helpfully provide a ‘frequency chart’ to show how often numbers are hit and a record of all winning numbers since 1997, presumably so players can determine which numbers are ‘due’. Don’t get me started on that….

The five white balls combine to form 11,238,513 combinations. Add the 26 ‘Powerball’ numbers and you’ve got 292,201,338 possible combinations. So for the geniuses that think you can guarantee a Powerball win by buying all the number combinations this should provide a reality check. To start with you’d need a spare $584,402,676 to bankroll the scheme. You’d have to set up a process to enter and track each of the 292,201,338 combinations. ‘Quick Pick’ won’t work since you need to make sure you have all of the number combinations covered. Don’t forget taxes and other ‘takeouts’. The current Powerball jackpot has a cash value of $411.7 million meaning that you’d wind up in the hole well over $100,000,000. You would pick up some of the smaller jackpots here and there to cover some of your deficit. You also have to hope that there aren’t any other winners and that’s tough to do with well over 200,000,000 tickets expected to be sold for Wednesday’s drawing. If you have to split the jackpot with another winner (or winners) you’ll be even deeper in the hole. Technically, you can buy the tickets necessary to guarantee at least a share of a jackpot win. It’s logistically difficult at best and with no way to guarantee that you won’t have to share the jackpot with other winners still financially untenable.

POWERBALL LOTTERY JACKPOT BETTING ODDS

WILL A JACKPOT WINNING POWERBALL TICKET BE DRAWN ON WEDNESDAY?

Yes: -170
No: +150

HOW MANY JACKPOT WINNING POWERBALL TICKETS WILL BE DRAWN ON WEDNESDAY?

0: +125
1: +210
2: +325
3: +500
4 or more: +1000

TOTAL NUMBER OF TICKETS SOLD FOR WEDNESDAY’S POWERBALL DRAWING?

Over 255 million: +150
Under 255 million: -170

Per Lotto Report website