Players hold breath for $700M Powerball drawing

Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa

Lottery players across the U.S. scooped up $2 Powerball tickets in hopes of beating the odds and winning a massive $700 million jackpot. The winning numbers were 6-7-16-23-26. Red Ball is 4.

Some details about the game and the giant prize:

Powerball is played in 44 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all of which collectively oversee the game. Drawings are held twice a week. Five white balls are drawn from a drum containing 69 balls and one red ball is selected from a drum with 26 balls.

The odds of matching all six numbers remain the same, at a miserable one in 292.2 million, regardless of the jackpot prize. However, a larger prize attracts more players and that means more number combinations are selected, so the probability increases that one or more people will buy winning tickets. So, an individual’s chances of winning don’t increase, but the odds that someone will win do rise. Tom Rietz, a professor at the University of Iowa who researches probabilities, says it’s hard for people to fathom what odds of one in 292.2 million mean. For a better sense, he suggests people envision the 324 million U.S. residents. Your chance of winning is roughly comparable to being that one lucky person out of the entire population, with everyone else losing.

The jackpot will keep growing until someone matches all the numbers, and that can take awhile. The reason the prize is so large is because there hasn’t been a Powerball jackpot winner since June 10.

The $700 million jackpot is second only to a $1.6 billion prize shared by three people in January 2016. The current jackpot refers to the annuity option, doled out in 30 payments over 29 years, increasing 5 percent annually. Nearly all winners favor the cash option, which would now be $443.3 million.

Face it, you’re almost certainly not going to win the jackpot, but players have much better odds of one in 25 of winning a lesser prize. Those odds range from one in 11.7 million of winning $1 million for matching the five regular balls to one in 38 for matching the Powerball and winning $4.