UPDATE: Powerball jackpot now up to $550M

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November 28, 2012

UPDATE: Powerball jackpot now up to $550M

Anonymous The Eagle-Tribune The Gloucester Daily Times Wed Nov 28, 2012, 01:55 PM EST

CHICAGO (AP) — Eight months after a trio of ticket buyers split a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot to set a world lottery record, Powerball is offering up a prize that would be the second highest.

The $550 million jackpot, the largest in Powerball's history, represents a potential life-changing fortune. But before shelling out $2 for a ticket, here are some things to consider:

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A GOOD BET: SOMEONE WILL WIN

It's the gambler's mantra: Somebody's gotta win, so why not me?

The first part is true; somebody will win the Powerball jackpot.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of Multi-State Lottery Association, predicts there's about a 75 percent chance it'll happen Wednesday — maybe better if there's a flurry of last-minute ticket purchasers picking unique numbers.

The jackpot already has defied long odds by rolling over 16 consecutive times without anyone hitting the big prize, which now stands at $550 million ($360.2 million cash value). Strutt puts the odds at around 5 percent there would be no winner in the entire run through Wednesday.

As the drought increases, so too will the chances of it ending on the next draw, because ticket sales spike with a growing jackpot.

Someone will win. Eventually.

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A BAD BET: IT'LL BE YOU

It's true to say that you have a better chance of being struck by lightning than winning the Powerball. But that woefully understates the danger of lightning.

Tim Norfolk, a University of Akron mathematics professor who teaches a course on gambling, puts the odds of a lightning strike in a person's lifetime at 1 in 5,000. The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot: 1 in 175 million.

While weather is the go-to analogy for such astronomical odds, Norfolk suggests there are better ones.

For example, you'd have a slightly better chance of randomly picking the name of one specific female in the United States: 1 in 157 million, according to the latest census.

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VICTORY LOVES COMPANY

Should you win the jackpot, there's a good chance you'll have to share — and not just with family, friends and Uncle Sam.

The odds of someone winning increase as the ticket sales do. So, too, do the odds of duplicate tickets, especially for people who choose their own numbers rather than letting the computers pick.

Prefer the lucky numbers of seven or 11? You're not alone. How about a loved one's birthday? It's 31 or lower — digits more frequently duplicated than 32 and up. (There are 59 white balls and 35 red balls in the draw).

Norfolk predicts that if there is a winner, there will be multiple ones because mathematical theory shows that numbers have a way of clustering, even at much smaller sample sizes.

If you take 23 random people, there's about a 50-50 chance that at least two will have the same birthday, Norfolk said. Throw choice into the equation — about 20 percent of players typically select their own numbers — and the clusters could be even more defined.

That played out in March, when three tickets from Kansas, Maryland and Illinois split the world-record $656 million Mega Millions jackpot.

A single ticket holds Powerball's current record of $365 million in 2006, shared by several ConAgra Foods Workers in Lincoln, Neb.