$550 MILLION: Powerball buying frenzy sparks another jackpot increase

My guess is 625 by draw time.. a billion would be insane if it doesn't hit... Way to start December out and end the year!! Couldn't even fathom being the sole winner of that jackpot!!!

Roll over baby, roll over! I want to see people blow their entire paycheck trying to win a half a billion cash value!  I will use a multi-pronged attack to win...subscription, a few QPs and OPs at store, a few of both online. Then I wouldn't check my numbers until Monday.

I could!

Seriously, if it rolled to a billion, I would probably buy $100 dollars worth of tickets.

However, I think there may be up to 3 winners tonight.

I thought maybe I have spent $20 on this one, but I think I may have to buy another 10 picks, so another $20.

Yeah, I think I could handle winning.   :-D

It's mind boggling to think that if nobody wins tonight, then in just 3 days from now, the cash payout after taxes will basically be as much as the just about half Billion advertised jackpot is right now.

It only takes one ticket to win.And thats all I bought.

I won $3 on my single $1 mega millions ticket last night (1 numbers plus mega ball), so the only $2 powerball ticket I bought at the same time, was essentially free.

I'm a believer in 1 set of numbers, leave it up to fate. Even if you have 175,000 sets of numbers, that only covers 1/10th of 1% of the 175 million combinations of numbers. Back in March, an NBA player bought 10,000 mega millions tickets, but he didn't win the jackpot.

The occasional player jumping in on a big jackpot would be expected to spend his mortgage chasing a dream.

The experienced player knows that the major part of his investment should come from refining his strategy to select the right numbers to build the best combinations.

Laziness leads to waste. It may seem convenient to walk into a store and demand a specific number of QPs and be done with it, but at the end of the day I will be able to pay my bills, will he?

"UPDATE: Will roll to $900 million if nobody wins tonight".......

With current interest rates the cash value is about 65% of the advertised annuity. About 64 cents of each ticket goes to the jackpot. That means that the increase in the advertised jackpot is pretty close to the number of tickets they expect to sell, so the $225 million increase from the last drawing means they're confident that they'll sell 225 million tickets. If it climbs to 600 by tonight  it would mean sales are closer to 275 million tickets.

Here are some rough estimates of what percentage of combinations are used at given sales levels:
225 million tickets   about 77%
250 million tickets   about 82%
275 million tickets   about 84%
300 million tickets   about 86%

Selling 90% of combinations would probably take an absolute minimum of 350 million tickets. Figure 95% is somewhere north of 450 million.

That's a rough approximation based on probability and some assumptions about additional duplicates based on people choosing non-random combinations. That means there's about a 20 to 15% chance of a rollover, depending on how high sales go and what numbers are drawn.  Lots of high numbers are more likely to result in a rollover, while all birthday numbers will almost certainly result in at least one winner, and probably more.

Personally I prefer MM and  part of me wants to see them keep the record, but it would certainly be wild to see a real jackpot pass the half billion dollar mark.  People get irrational, but I'm not convinced that a rollover will take the advertised jackpot to a billion, since it's possible that we're close to the saturation point. Depending on where it finishes, reaching abillion would require selling 30 to 40% more tickets than get sold for this drawing. OTOH, even if some people burn out and don't play again if it rolls the advertised jackpot only needs to reach $764 million for the cash prize to reach half a billion.

Thanks KY Floyd. 

I bought two more "Donald's" for good measure.....

Its something that only 5 white balls and 1 red powerball is all it takes, when the other 54 white balls and 38 red powerballs are worthless. With the odds around 175 million to one. I think using stategy will greatly reduce those odds by tens of millions. By using statistics and previos results from the past 26 drawings for picking numbers would really increase your chances.