The latest Powerball jackpot drawing scheduled for Saturday night, April 6, is now worth an estimated total of $1.3 billion.
It’s the fourth-biggest jackpot in the Powerball game and the eighth-largest sum in U.S. lottery jackpots, worth $608.9 million. The jackpot has reached this number due to a current three-month stretch without an individual winning, spanning 40 consecutive drawings without an official jackpot winner. Saturday night marks the 41st drawing, which is a significant number since 41 is the record for most drawings that have been reached in 2021 and 2022.
Odds and history of the Powerball jackpot
Lottery officials have stated that the odds to win this latest Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. This is much longer than the 1 in 175 million odds that existed prior to 2015 since lottery officials opted to create a bigger top prize with greater odds to win smaller prizes, which are roughly 1 in 25 odds.
Since there are 292.2 million possible number combinations in a Powerball drawing, players’ odds of winning quickly decrease the closer they get to the jackpot. To put 1 in 292.2 million odds into perspective, University of Nebraska-Omaha mathematics professor, Andrew Swift, states that the odds of winning Saturday’s $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot are a little worse than flipping a coin and getting heads 28 consecutive times.
Despite the massive number of lottery tickets purchased during the previous drawing on Wednesday night, the Multi-State Lottery Association reports that under 23 percent of the 292.2 million possible number combinations were covered.
As the Powerball jackpot continues to grow, the probability of yielding a winning ticket becomes greater. When the jackpot rises, more tickets are purchased, meaning more number combinations are bought. This allows game leaders to estimate how many potential number combinations are covered, as long as a ticket contains a unique number sequence. This is known as coverage. A higher coverage rate means the probability of a Powerball jackpot winning increases.
If it wins, Saturday’s drawing will become the fourth-biggest Powerball jackpot, surpassing the $1.08 billion Powerball ticket that was drawn on July 19, 2023, in California. The all-time Powerball jackpot winnings totaled $2.04 billion in California on November 7, 2022.
