The 29 lotteries that participate in the Powerball game have voted to make changes that will boost the average jackpot size, but also will boost the odds of winning.
Starting Aug. 29, the beginning jackpot will increase to $15 million from the current $10 million, the Multi-State Lottery Association announced Wednesday. The top prize will grow by no less than $5 million between each drawing.
"Lottery games need to be changed from time to time, to respond to both player demands and population changes," said Randy Davis, president of the Louisiana Lottery Corp. and chairman of the Powerball Game Group.
To boost the jackpot size, two numbers will be added to the first pool in the game, meaning players will choose five numbers from one to 55. The current first draw picks five white balls from a pool of 53.
The Powerball is drawn from a separate pool of red balls numbered from one to 42. That will not change.
The larger number of white balls boosts the jackpot odds to 1 in 146.1 million. The current game has jackpot odds of 1 in 120.5 million.
Ed Stanek, Iowa Lottery chief executive and one of Powerball's co-inventors, said the changes are part of a popular product's evolution.
"Players tell us they expect large jackpots in the game and we will continue to deliver those," Stanek said.
The odds of winning a cash prize in the game will increase only slightly, to 1 in 36.60 from 1 in 36.06, lottery officials said.
I said 5/55 + 1/40. They say they going to do 5/55 + 1/42. I was half right.
I like it. No formula is going to make everyone happy, but this suites me just fine. It will only take two draws to increase the jackpot to 25M. An amount that has only been achieved twice this entire year!
I like the changes and I hope it leads to higher jackpots that powerball has been having lately.
i think it will. now that they are raising the starting jackpot, increasing the matrix (even though they should have increased the number of powerballs to choose from), and increasing the minimum rollover, they should have no problem getting the jackpot back up into the $100 million range.
and it will take only 17 draws (maximum) for the jackpot to get back to $100 million.
I just hope they raise the lower prize amounts. They didn't when they went to the current format.
they will need to do so. winning $100,000 for matching 5 of 55 is way too little for the odds.
- 5 & Powerball: Jackpot (Of Course)
- 5 (No Powerball) : $200,000
- 4 & Powerball: $10,000
- 4 (No Powerball): $200
- 3 & Powerball: $200
- 3 (No Powerball): $10
- 2 & Powerball: $10
- 1 & Powerball: $4
- 0 & Powerball: $3
May I also suggest the removal of the Match 5 Bonus Pool which limits jackpot growth to $25,000,000 per draw. Especially now, considering that with PowerPlay multiplier of x5, matching 5 with no Powerball would still net $1,000,000, and that's every draw.The upcoming powerball change includes increasing the match 5 amount to $200,000.
The press release said nothing about changes to the lower tier prizes.
I thought PB would go for longer odds than 1 in 146 million. At least the starting jackpot and initial increases will be higher.
I'm glad they didn't.
The current odds of 120m-to-1 are depressing as it stands and odds of 146m-to-1 are rediculous at best. Even the Mega Millions is better at 130m-to-1 which has been described as infinitesimal by statisticians. We just got the lottery last year and I was buying 2-20 tickets depending on the pot, but now I will never buy more than a couple at a time and only when the jackpots are 100+ million or I may just play my wife's single number and be done with it. Other than that I plan to pay more attention to the smaller multi-state lotteries (lotto south) that I have a 10x better chance of winning. I would much rather participate in a 10-20 million dollar lottery where buying 10 tickets is equivalent to buying 105 powerball tickets. I hope the powerball officials are not doing this just because the numbers were hit early a few times, because that can happen again at 146m-to-1 and if it does are they going to raise them again. I don't think the public needs to have 200-400 million dollar jackpots to be attracted to the lottery. People buy tickets when they see the jackpot is on the high-side no matter what that may be (it doesn't need to be an astronomical amount).
Tony:
You need to push for Tennessee to join Lotto South or Hot Lotto.
I agree, I run up to Kentucky to buy lotto south tickets
I just can't see changing the matrix. It is difficult enough now to just win $3....much less the BIG ONE!!!! This is all about GREED from the smaller states. When the jackpot is hit(and just by luck) numerous times over the last 3-4 months..states with small populations lose $30-$50 million/month just in lost revenue, only because the jackpots are not escalating to enourmous amounts. I think this change will "turn off" many players....and like ME, will stick to the smaller payouts, like Pick3 and Pick4. Hey!!! who couldn't use $500 for a straight play on Pick3?? I'll take it any and every day!!!!!!!
I would like to know just how many of the 29 lotteries in the PB game actually voted FOR changing the game?????
I have to believe that there are a lot of people out there who know the odds are very long at 120m-to-1 and this will push them away from the powerball. I doubt that I am much different than any other person as I set a budget for the lottery and try buy my plays toward the back end (after the pot has been built up a bit). If those pots are 50 million dollars or 200 million makes very little difference to the average guy. I am not going to go take out a bank loan just because the lottery has gone 34 plays and is up to 350 million dollars, in fact I will see it as evidence that thing is unwinnable. At 120m-to-1 the powerball seemed to be working very well. The jackpot was being hit about once a month, which to me seems reasonable. Now we are likely not to see a winner for 2 or more months and that does not say good things about a lottery in which so many people participate. And all the powerball officials are offering is a 5 million dollar carrot on the front end which will make almost no difference by the time someone gets around to winning it.
Sorry to rant, but one last reason this change is bad for Powerball. Before the change, Powerball had better odds than MegaMillions (130m:1 vs 120m:1). Now MegaMillions has a substantial advantage (130m:1 vs 146m:1). People on the border may decide to play MegaMillions over Powerball. I won't feel sorry for them if sales drop, especially since this change was motivated by greed on the part of the lottery officials and not on making the game better for the players. They should have left it alone. This has just been a year of disappointments for me, first EA kills the ESPN NFL Football series by purchasing exclusive rights to NFL names and likenesses and now Powerball odds have been jacked up to an insulting level. I mean I could have tollerated a slight increase, but a 21 percent increase in the odds.. please.
Does anyone know when this will take effect?
good question....by the way i agree with the person who would rather play pick five,i could use 100,000 dollars as much as i could 10 million and by the time i buy ten pick five tickets that would equal buying a hundred powerball tickets to get to the same odds,i ,ight spend one dollar on powerball maybe but my main allegiance will be to games that are winnable on a daily basis like pick 5,a winner won on pick 5 last night in memphis where i live,all the more reason to stick with pick 5....
also i would love lottosouth,if we could get that here in tennessee i'd quit powerball forever....
Keep in mind that the odds of winning smaller prizes are much higher with Lotto 5. They need a Match 2 prize.
Even though they plan to drop two new numbered balls into the mixing hopper on August 29, it certainly won't keep me from continuing to regularly play favorite old number sets. My main concern is the type of drawing conducted regardless of tweaking the odds. I'm just relieved and thankful that Powerball didn't change to computerized draws.
that would be commercial suicide if powerball went computerized,that would ruin the magic of the game......
jimmysand i agree,i wish we had prizes for matching two on lotto five but then again that would mean a lot more money they would be paying out and you know how stingy they are with prize payouts......
I just went to the powerball page and noticed that this is not the first time they have made the odds worse. Apparently it started off with 49 numbers. (Click the news and info link, and then click "History of Multistate Lottery Association")
Mike:
No lottery game is a stingy as NY Lotto 6/59...
Yes, a few years ago the odds were 80m:1. I wish I had been able to participate in it back then. But they have added many states and thats why the odds have increased. Also, if anyone was wondering or missed it in the article, then new odds are not going into effect until August 29th. So, I have almost four months to play it the way I like it and then I will resolve myself to 1-2 tickets per draw and of course lotto south.
C'mon now. If you're playing at 120m:1, you'll play at 145m:1. The game will be 20% harder to win. Match 5 is 21.2% more difficult: 1:3,478,761 compared to 1:2,869,685, but second prize increases by 100%?? That's a deal! It's still only $1.
You speak as if a 21% increase in odds against winning is no big deal. If that is the case why not just double them. How about 300mil:1? Then we could watch 2-3 winners a year win half a billion dollars or so, thats obsurd. You can already see $100-200 million jackpots with the 120m:1 odds as it happened 5 times last years, so why jack it up just because a few people hit it early this year. And as for a 3.5mil:1 chance of winning $200,000 being a great deal.. this is equally obsurd. Our lotto five just reached $450,000 and the odds on it are only 500k:1. Thats 7 times better than the chance you have to win $200,000 with a Powerball ticket. Of course you can always buy power play, but then you only get half of the numbers for the same amount of money so you reduce your odds of winning by half. People need to face the facts, Powerball is now the worst lottery odds you can playing in America. I will still participate in the Powerball, but I would encourage people not to buy more than 1-2 tickets. Hopefully the Powerball organization will lose money and drop the odds back to 120m:1.
I don't think the increase is a big deal. Where's the cutoff point for you? 138m:1? Is there some magical number where above that line you won't play more than $2?
Powerball is a game of dreams. It's an excursion from my 8-5 job. I'd rather put down $5 for a $500m fantasy than $5 for a $19m dream that is slightly more probable.
I haven't seen anywhere if they changed the lame rules regarding limits to record jackpots. Jag, I wouldn't worry about the whiners. Some people just don't get the concept of multi-state games and big jackpots. The difference between 120 and 146 or even 160 million isn't much. People who don't like odds above 100 million should stick to one state games. Leave the large jackpots to those who want a chance at them. It would be like me saying that pick 3 should be banned. If you don't like a game leave it for people who do.
They are probably not going to get rid of the match 5 bonus rule since they have created it and it has not gone into use yet. I emailed a week ago about getting rid of the rule and they were talking it up but one thing they did say that was interesting is that the record at which match 5 bonus starts is 340 million. But the next time it gets to the record it will be 365 million and then 390 million and so on. So it is not always set at the same start up point. It goes up in 25 million increments just like the jackpot run will once it gets past the record level.
yeah. remember that once it gets to record levels, without the limit, the rollovers could be in the $100 million range.
So the same stupid rule is still there?
What kind of a jerk wants less of a chance to win?
Me
Big jackpots require big odds. I want to play for a $1 billion jackpot and I would play a game with 300m:1 odds.
well that bites... a matrix change means ALL previous data becomes irrelevant (IF you believe history is relevant... I am one that does)... gotta start from square one with everything. (pb red ball data will still count tho)
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..........
so, aug 29th is the end of the 5/53 world.... now we have a deadline.... get crunchin'!
and they better not get any bright ideas about $2 minimum tickets... if they do that they should be boycotted... we already have a pennsylvania for that.