Powerball Hits $900 Million After No Winner Drawn

Update: July 19, 3:44 p.m. ET: The jackpot is now up to $1 billion, after no winning ticket was sold for the Monday draw. Powerball says this marks the third time that its jackpot has reached this eye-watering milestone, and it ranks as the seventh largest jackpot in history, the largest being a $2.04 billion jackpot won in 2022. The draw for this $1 billion jackpot is tonight, so you’ll want to act fast if you want to be in the running.

Original article follows:

The $900 million Powerball payout is now among the top three largest prizes of all time, but your odds of winning this huge chunk of cash are achingly slim.

The Powerball lottery just got a little more exciting. After no winner claimed the prize on Saturday, the Powerball’s jackpot has now risen to $900 million. The upcoming winner—assuming someone will win it this time around—can either cash out the $900 million in 30 yearly installments, or as a lump sum of $465.1 million before taxes. The original jackpot was estimated at around $875 million, and the $900 million payout is now among the top three largest prizes of all time, Powerball says.

What’s more likely to you than winning the lottery?

According to Powerball, the odds of winning the grand prize in any drawing is 1 in 292.2 million. Those are lofty chances at taking home a major sum of cash—so lofty in fact, that there’s plenty of other things that would happen to you first. Like:

• Cracking an egg with two yolks is more common than you might think. Egg purveyor Pete and Gerry’s says that an estimated 1 in 1,000 eggs has a double yolk, which is about 1 egg in 83 dozens.
• Claustrophobics be damned, you have a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting stuck in an elevator according to emergency communications provider Kings III.
• The CDC says that you have around a 1 in a million chance of getting struck by lightning, but the good news is that 90% of those struck by lightning survive. So once you get out of the hospital, you can buy another lottery ticket.

How can I hack the Powerball lottery?

The easiest way to increase your odds of winning the Powerball’s $900 million jackpot is to prime the pump, or, in other words, buy more tickets. If the odds of you winning the Powerball are 1 in 292.2 million, then buying a second ticket would increase those odds to 2 in 292.2 million. Buying a third ticket would then increase those odds to 3 in 292.2 million, and so on. Look, we didn’t say it was a good hack.

You could also move to a different state. 45 states participate in the Powerball lottery, and some states are home to more wins than others. Jackpocket, in which users can order lottery through the app, says that the top three states for Powerball winners are Indiana with 39 wins, Missouri with 31 wins, and Minnesota with 22 wins.

Even still, Powerball says that the probability of winning any of their prizes is 1 in 24.87 with the lowest payout being $4. Lottery tickets are around $2, so you have a pretty good chance at profiting.