Chances Winning Numbers
- Golden Chance Winning Numbers
- Chances Winning Numbers Bahamas
- Chances Winning Numbers Bahamas
- 2nd Chance Winning Numbers
- Chances Winning Numbers Bingo
- Prizes
Powerball has nine prize tiers, and you win by matching the numbers you choose to the winning numbers drawn. You can win a prize by matching the Powerball alone, but you must match all five main numbers plus the Powerball to land the jackpot. Learn all about the different ways to win, the odds of winning and how to claim any prizes.
Odds of Winning
The prize you win depends on how many of the winning numbers you match. The table below shows what you need to do to win in each tier, the odds of doing so, and the prize amounts before tax. Your overall chances of winning any Powerball prize are around 1 in 25.
Your chances of winning the Powerball – if you were to play only one set of numbers, would be 1 in 292,201,338. You can of course improve your odds of winning by purchasing more tickets and playing more combinations, but realistically speaking, it won’t make much of a difference. Overall odds of winning a prize in Powerball are 1 in 24.87. Power Play Prizes. Pick five numbers from 1 to 69. Pick a Powerball number from 1 to 26.
Pick five numbers from 1 to 69. Pick a Powerball number from 1 to 26. You have the option of adding Power Play for an extra $1. Check if you’ve won. $1 to add Power Play. All the jurisdictions that participate in the Powerball lottery allow players to purchase tickets for draws in advance. Chances Games is a Restrictive Interactive Gaming Website operated by Jarol Investments Limited, a business operating under the Gaming Act 2014 and Regulated by The Gaming Board For The Bahamas. Play games with the highest odds of winning. Before you purchase a lottery ticket or scratch-off.
| Match | Odds of Winning | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 5 plus Powerball | 1 in 292,201,338 | Jackpot |
| 5 | 1 in 11,688,054 | $1 million |
| 4 plus Powerball | 1 in 913,130 | $50,000 |
| 4 | 1 in 36,525 | $100.00 |
| 3 plus Powerball | 1 in 14,494 | $100.00 |
| 3 | 1 in 580 | $7.00 |
| 2 plus Powerball | 1 in 701 | $7.00 |
| 1 plus Powerball | 1 in 92 | $4.00 |
| Powerball | 1 in 38 | $4.00 |
| The overall odds of winning are 1 in 25 | ||
The jackpot starts at $40 million and increases every time it is not won. It is regularly worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has even exceeded $1 billion. Visit the Powerball Winners page for a list of the 10 biggest jackpots in the history of the game.
Power Play
A Power Play multiplier of 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x or 10x is randomly selected before each Powerball draw and if you opt in any prizes you win will be boosted by the value of the multiplier. The only exception is the Match 5 prize, which is doubled to $2 million regardless of which multiplier is drawn. The 10x multiplier is only in play when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. The table below shows how prizes increase with each Power Play multiplier:
| Match | Base Prize | x2 | x3 | x4 | x5 | x10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 + Powerball | Jackpot | Jackpot | Jackpot | Jackpot | Jackpot | Jackpot |
| 5 | $1 million | $2 million | $2 million | $2 million | $2 million | $2 million |
| 4 + Powerball | $50,000 | $100,000 | $150,000 | $200,000 | $250,000 | $500,000 |
| 4 | $100 | $200 | $300 | $400 | $500 | $1,000 |
| 3 + Powerball | $100 | $200 | $300 | $400 | $500 | $1,000 |
| 3 | $7 | $14 | $21 | $28 | $35 | $70 |
| 2 + Powerball | $7 | $14 | $21 | $28 | $35 | $70 |
| 1 + Powerball | $4 | $8 | $12 | $16 | $20 | $40 |
| Powerball | $4 | $8 | $12 | $16 | $20 | $40 |
Golden Chance Winning Numbers
The odds of each Power Play being selected change depending on whether or not the 10x multiplier is in play. Here are the odds when the 10x is active:
| Power Play | Odds |
|---|---|
| 10x | 1 in 43 |
| 5x | 1 in 21.5 |
| 4x | 1 in 14.33 |
| 3x | 1 in 3.23 |
| 2x | 1 in 1.79 |
Here are the odds on each Power Play ball being drawn when the jackpot exceeds $150 million and the 10x multiplier is not available for selection:
| Power Play | Odds |
|---|---|
| 5x | 1 in 21 |
| 4x | 1 in 14 |
| 3x | 1 in 3.23 |
| 2x | 1 in 1.75 |
Taxes on Prizes
Prizes of up to $600 are not taxed, but if you win an amount between $600 and $5,000 you will need to report your winnings on a federal income tax form. Any prize over $5,000 will be subject to a federal withholding of at least 24% (up to 37% for jackpot winners).
Additionally, you may be taxed at a state level depending on where you bought your ticket. New York has the highest tax rate of 8.82%, with Maryland just behind on 8.75%. California, Florida, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, U.S Virgin Islands, Washington State and Wyoming are the only locations that do not tax lottery winnings.
Claiming Prizes
If you win a prize, you must claim it in the state where you bought your ticket. Each state has its own limit for how long tickets remain valid, ranging from 90 days from the date of the draw in New Mexico to a year in several jurisdictions. You can claim prizes of up to $600 from authorised retailers, but for larger amounts you will need to submit a claim by mail or visit a regional claims center. If you win the jackpot, you should contact your state lottery directly and make arrangements to claim the prize in person.
Cash vs Annuity
If you win the jackpot, you can choose between a lump sum or an annuity. The annuity is the advertised jackpot value and will see you paid in 30 instalments over 29 years, with the first payment made straight away. The annuity shows how much you will receive if the money is invested by the lottery, taking into account all of the profits that the investments would make over the 29-year period. The annuity payments will grow by 5 percent each year to cover inflation and cost of living increases. The cash option is smaller as it contains only the money raised from ticket sales during that game and any preceding rollovers.
What are the odds of winning the Mega Millions lottery jackpot and striking it rich? How long would you need to play before having a 50-50 chance of winning? Keep on reading to find out!
Chances Winning Numbers Bahamas
Is buying a Mega Millions lottery ticket ever a 'good' idea? If your goal is to have fun—and you find that sort of thing fun—then perhaps it is. But if your goal is to make a good investment, then a good idea it is not.
How high are the odds stacked against you? Can you improve your chances of winning by playing more often? And how many years, centuries, or millenia do you have to play to have a 50-50 chance of winning?
Stay tuned because those are exactly the questions we'll be talking about today.
.The Rules of Mega Millions
Simply put, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are not in your favor. As we'll see today, just how not in your favor they are is pretty astonishing. If nothing else, the very long odds we'll talk about serve as a nice reminder that if you do choose to play, you really should not expect to win the big prize. Ever.
Chances Winning Numbers Bahamas
Like most big-bucks lottery games, Mega Millions is a game where you select a bunch of numbers and hope they all match the numbers that show up on randomly drawn ping-pong balls. In order to calculate the actual probability of winning this game, we'll need to get a bit more specific with the rules. As described on the game's official website:
'Players may pick six numbers from two separate pools of numbers—five different numbers from 1 to 75 and one number from 1 to 15. You win the jackpot by matching all six winning numbers in a drawing.'
Seems totally winnable, right? Looks can be deceiving. To get a better picture of your chances, let's calculate some probabilities.
Probability and the Mega Millions Jackpot
In order to win the jackpot, you need to correctly guess five numbers between 1 and 75 from one pool as well as another number between 1 and 15 from a completely separate pool. What's the probability of guessing correctly?
Let's start by thinking about the five numbers drawn from the pool ranging between 1 and 75. How many sequences of five numbers from this pool are possible? Well, there are 75 numbers that can be drawn first. After drawing that initial number, there are 74 numbers that can be drawn second (since the numbers don't go back into the pool after being drawn). There are 73 possible numbers that can be drawn third, 72 that can be drawn fourth, and 71 that can be drawn fifth. This means that there are a total of
75 x 74 x 73 x 72 x 71 = 2,071,126,800
sequences of five balls that can be drawn from the first pool. But the folks at the lottery are generous and actually don't care about the order that you write down your guessed numbers. Since there are 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 120 different possible arrangements of the order in which those five balls were drawn (and since any of those sequences are counted as a match), there are actually a total of
2,071,126,800 / 120 = 17,259,390
possible order-independent combinations of five balls drawn from this pool.
But there's still that sixth ball from the second pool to worry about. Since there are 15 possible numbers in that pool, the total number of possible combinations of all six balls in the Mega Millions lottery game is:
17,259,390 x 15 = 258,890,850
And that is a really big number. Which is bad news for hopeful players because the chances of winning are 1 over this number. In other words, the probability of winning the Mega Millions jackpot is 1 in 258,890,850 or about 0.0000004%—not so good.
How to Get a 50-50 Chance of Winning
2nd Chance Winning Numbers
But all hope is not lost because there is a way to improve your chances of winning. Well, sort of. The secret is to play for a long, long—really, really long—time. Did I mention it has to be a long time?
To see what I mean, let's think about how long you would have to play in order to have a 50-50 chance of winning. As we learned when we solved the birthday problem, the easiest way to solve problems like this is often to think not about the probability of winning after a number of attempts, but instead to think about the probability of not winning—i.e., losing—in each and every one of those attempts, and then to subtract this probability of losing from 1 to find the probability of winning.
There's a 50-50 chance that you'll win the jackpot sometime in the next 1.7 million years!
Every time you play the Mega Millions, the probability of losing is 258,890,849/258,890,850—which is a 99.99999 (and then some more 9s) percent chance of losing. The probability of losing twice in a row is this number squared, the probability of losing 100 times in a row is this number raised to the 100th power, and the probability of losing N times in a row is this number raised to the Nth power.
If you calculate (258,890,849/258,890,850)180,000,000, you'll find that it's approximately equal to 50%. Which also means that your odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot finally reach the 50-50 mark after playing 180 million times! Since the game is played twice a week, you could play 104 times per year. If you buy 1 ticket each game, there's a 50-50 chance that you'll win the jackpot sometime in the next 1.7 million years!
As I said, the odds of this game are not in your favor. Of course, odds are just odds—and occasionally anomalies happen. But I wouldn't bet on it.
Wrap Up
Chances Winning Numbers Bingo
OK, that's all the math we have time for today!
Please be sure to check out my book, 'The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Guide to Algebra.' And remember to become a fan of The Math Dude on Facebook, where you’ll find lots of great math posted throughout the week. If you’re on Twitter, please follow me there, too.
Until next time, this is Jason Marshall with The Math Dude’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Make Math Easier. Thanks for reading, math fans!
Lottery balls image courtesy of Shutterstock.