• Powerball
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1. Powerball

Powerball is played across 48 US states and juristictions each Wednesday and Saturday. Find out everything you need to know about how to play this record-breaking lottery. Get information on the latest Powerball numbers and prizes on offer, as well as details on the history of the game and previous jackpot winners.

Whether you include meaningful numbers on your Powerball ticket or leave it all to chance with a random entry, your odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338, with the chances of winning a prize in any category set at 1 in 25. Most players think the odds of matching the Powerball to win a prize are 1 in 26, since the Powerball is drawn from a field of numbers from 1 to 26. But consider this The odds of matching the Powerball ALONE are harder than 1 in 26, because there is also the chance you could match one or more white balls, in addition to the Powerball, to win another prize. Powerball is a multistate lottery that is quite popular due to its multimillion-dollar jackpots. Some of these jackpots reach values that are well over $100 million. An interesting quest ion from a probabilistic sense is, “How are the odds calculated on the likelihood of winning Powerball?”.

Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets are shown at a retailer, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2021, in Surfside, Fla. Lottery players will have a shot Friday night at the fifth-largest jackpot in U.S. History after no tickets matched all the numbers in the latest Mega Millions drawing. The big prize for Powerball, the other national lottery game, is $550 million for Wednesday night's drawing. The odds of winning the US Powerball. Powerball game is a 5/69 lottery format. So the rule is to pick five numbers from 1 to 69. There are 11 million ways you can do it in Powerball.

Due to stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus outbreak, Powerball will change the starting jackpot to $20 million after the current jackpot is won. You can find updates on our dedicated Coronavirus Lottery Updates page.

How to Play Powerball

This is how you can play Powerball:

• 1. Choose five main numbers between 1 and 69.


• 2. Select a Powerball number between 1 and 26.


• 3. Choose whether to add Power Play, offering the chance to multiply non-jackpot prizes.


• 4. Purchase your tickets by the cut-off time in your state or online. This ranges from 6:45pm PST in Washington to 10pm EST in New York and Florida. Players in Puerto Rico can play until 10:59pm when the clocks switch forward an hour over winter.

Once you have your Powerball tickets, simply wait for the drawing, which takes place on Wednesday and Saturday nights in Tallahassee, Florida at 10:59pm EST, and check the Winning Numbers page soon afterwards to find out if you are due a prize.

What is Power Play?

Power Play is an option you can add to your ticket that multiplies the value of the non-jackpot prizes you win. Visit the Power Play page for more information.

Prizes

Powerball players can win prizes in nine different tiers, from matching just the Powerball right up to the jackpot for matching all five numbers plus the Powerball.

Aside from the jackpot, which starts at $20 million (*During the Coronavirus pandemic, the starting jackpot may be lower than this) and keeps getting bigger until it is won, the prize tiers in Powerball have fixed cash amounts. Here's a breakdown of the prize tiers and the odds for winning in that tier:

The only exception to this chart is California, where cash prizes in lower tiers are pari-mutuel. Their values are determined by the number of winners in each tier and the number of tickets sold.

Biggest Winners

Powerball creates hundreds of thousands of winners in each draw, as players from across the U.S go in search of life-changing jackpots. The top prize starts at a minimum of $20 million (*During the Coronavirus pandemic, the starting jackpot may be lower than this) and regularly grows into nine figures, sometimes even ten! The game has been responsible for many of the biggest winners in lottery history.

Here are the largest Powerball jackpots ever...

Powerball is famous worldwide for its record-breaking jackpots. This trend towards sky-rocketing prizes began in July 2013 when Colleen DeVries and Leslie Robbins of Wisconsin claimed $111.2 million, the first nine-figure top prize pool, and new highs have been reached regularly since.

Game History

Powerball is one of the biggest lottery games in the United States and regularly boasts eight, nine or even ten-figure jackpots. Read on to discover more about how this multi-state game came into existence and how changes in format have made Powerball one of the most popular and exciting lotteries in the world.

• Powerball’s roots can be traced back as far as September 1987, when lottery officials from Washington D.C., Iowa, Kansas, Oregon, Rhode Island and West Virginia joined to form the Multi-State Lottery Association.
• In February 1988, the Multi-State Lottery Association launched a brand new lottery known as Lotto*America. Eight additional states (Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Minnesota, Indiana, South Dakota, Kentucky and Delaware) joined the game between August 1989 and January 1991.
• Lotto*America was phased out in 1992 and Powerball was born. The first drawing took place on Saturday April 22nd 1992, with a two-drum draw machine and new ball sets being introduced.

• Between April 1994 and November 1995, the states of Arizona, Nebraska, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Connecticut joined the Powerball family.
• In July 1996, a number of live Powerball drawings were held at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Special drawings have since taken place across the country to commemorate specific events or anniversaries.
• New Mexico began offering Powerball in October 1996.
• On March 7th 2001, Power Play, an optional multiplier, was added to the game. For an extra $1, players could increase the value of any non-jackpot prize. The game continues to this day.
• Powerball opened its doors, as Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont, North Dakota, Tennessee, Maine, Oklahoma and North Carolina were all welcomed to the game between August 2001 and May 2006.
• Florida and Arkansas both joined the game in 2009, with the former landing the responsibility of hosting future drawings.
• 2010 was a big year for Powerball, as Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Virginia and Washington all joined in January, before Ohio and the U.S Virgin Islands began participating later in the year.
• The price of a Powerball ticket increased to $2 ($3 including Power Play) in January 2012.
• The state of California began selling Powerball tickets in 2013, but refused the offer the Power Play option, while Wyoming and Puerto Rico joined the following year.
• In early October 2015, various changes were made to the game, with the number of balls in the main pool increasing from 59 to 69, while the Powerball pool decreased from 35 to 26. This significantly altered the odds of winning, with the chances of winning any prize increasing, however, the jackpot became more difficult to win.
• On Wednesday January 13th 2016, the Powerball jackpot reached a record-breaking $1.58 billion, the biggest prize total ever offered by any lottery in the world. The prize was shared between three ticket holders - John and Lisa Munford of Tennessee, David Kaltschmidt and Maureen Smith from Florida, and Marvin and Mae Acosta of California.
• On Wednesday March 27th 2019, the Powerball jackpot reached $768 million, and was won by a single ticket bought in New Berlin, WI. This the largest single-ticket jackpot win in Powerball history.
• Powerball tickets went on sale in Mississippi for the first time ever on January 30th 2020, after the launch of the state lottery in November 2019.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292 million. However, the odds of winning any prize are a very reasonable 1 in 24.87 so it's not all doom and gloom.

If you match the Powerball at all, you're guaranteed a prize, even if you don't match any of the main five draw numbers. The prize for just matching the Powerball is US $4, and it's roughly a 1 in 38 chance. It isn't a 1 in 26 chance, because some people who match the Powerball will also match main draw numbers and win a higher prize.

Even if you don't match the Powerball, you can still win by matching three, four or five of the main draw numbers. The odds of this start from 1 in 580 for three balls, and a payout of US $7, up to odds of nearly 12 million to one for matching five numbers, which has a US $1 million prize.

PowerPlay

Power Play is a multiplier option. For an extra US $1 per ticket you can add Power Play. You don't have to choose any extra numbers for this. Rather than improving your chances of a win, Power Play increases the amount of prize money you receive if you do win.

One Power Play number is randomly selected from a pool of 42, marked with multipliers from 2x to 5x. If the jackpot is less than US $150 million, one extra 10x multiplier is added. Whichever multiplier is drawn, non-jackpot prizes are multiplied by that amount, for winning tickets with the Power Play option selected. This excludes the jackpot and any wins for five numbers matched (where the top prize is doubled to US $2 million).

PowerPlay Odds

Annuity vs. Cash

98% of Powerball jackpot winners chose to take the cash option. Or to put it another way, only 4 winners in the last 13 years (2003 - 2016) chose the annuity option.

If you win the Powerball jackpot, you have the option of taking an annuity - an annual payment over 30 instalments - or a cash lump sum paid to you in full. You'll see there's quite a difference between the two. This is because the cash lump sum pays out whatever's in the jackpot fund, whereas the annuity includes both the cash sum and the interest generated by investing it over the next 29 years. The value of the annuity option also has the added benefit of increasing by 5% annually.

The cash option is taxed in full when it is paid out - and taking the annuity option can also mean that more of the prize money is taxed at a lower rate over time. You can also leave the annuity to your family if you die, so there's no risk of losing out on your prize money if you're not expecting to live another 30 years.

Powerball Jackpot Winners - Cash or Annuity

This table illustrates the number of Powerball jackpot winners who took the cash or annuity option from 2003 to 2016.

Powerball

¹ Year contains one or more unclaimed jackpots.

Mega Millions Odds

² Mixed cash and annuity option taken by one or more winners.

Source: Powerball.com