$1 billion? Not as crazy as it sounds
The Powerball lottery that provided a lucky Rhode Island ticket holder $336.4 million could soon produce jackpots of $500 million or more.
Saturday's winner, who purchased a ticket at a Newport Stop & Shop, has yet to be identified. But the sixth-largest lottery ticket in U.S. history — worth about $210 million as a lump-sum payment — could eventually seem like chump change.
Had no one picked Saturday's six-number winning combination, the Powerball ticket would have jumped to a record $415 million this week.
"Could we see even bigger numbers? Anything's possible," says Tennessee Lottery Director Rebecca Paul Hargrove, head of the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL). "When a jackpot hits $200 million, it becomes water cooler talk and the increase in play is dramatic."
Tennessee, which has offered Powerball since 2004, had record ticket sales last week. Like other states, Tennessee receives at least 30% of Powerball revenue, which issued for education and other programs, says Hargrove, who has overseen lotteries in Illinois, Georgia and Florida.
MUSL, a coalition of several states, tweaked Powerball to make it more enticing last month, boosting ticket prices to $2 from $1 and hiking the minimum top payout to $40 million. The number of potential $1 million prizes was also increased, and the odds of winning the top prize were lowered to 1 in 176 million — from 1 in 195 million under prior Powerball draws.
"You definitely see a huge jump in sales," says Terri La Fleur, publisher of gaming journal La Fleur's. "We haven't seen a (top prize) above $390 million. We envision it can go over $500 million."
Lottery officials expected the changes to raise the anticipated top prize to $255 million, says MUSL director Chuck Strutt. But sales mushroomed the past 10 days. Powerball is offered in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the Virgin Islands.
"Can the jackpot in the new game hit $1 billion? In this game design, it is predicted to happen about once in 10 years," he says.
Saturday's winning numbers were 1-10-37-52-57, with a Powerball of 11. Rhode Island lottery director Gerry Aubin says he expects the winner to surface later this week. "Hopefully, they are seeking some financial and legal advice right now and changing their phone number," Aubin says. The state's previous top lottery winner, who won $151 million in 2007, didn't come forward for several days.
Higher prizes could lead to abuse, warns Keith Whyte, of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "Some people may be unable to resist risking hundreds or thousands of dollars," he says. "The simplest advice: keep purchases at reasonable levels and play for recreation, like pooling ticket purchases with friends."
"They should raise the price to $5.00 so people would realize they are throwing good money away.Spending any money on a lottery is just like setting it on fire, it will disappear before your eyes."
The reason scratch tickets cost more is because players do not have to wait for a drawing.By the way I have never played scratch tickets.
i wish they made a lottery game with the same odds as a casino game... i dont know why the lottery has to have such garbage odds when casinos make tons of money an have drastically better odds
First of all l was the first guy here to write about $500,000,000 jackpot and now everyone is copying me and for the lottery being like a casino well don't worry very soon a new casino will pop up in your back yard and then you be the first to start whinning about it too the lottery will never be like the casinos .They won't serve you alcohol and they won't let you see cute women in skimpy outfit so stop dreaming.
Remember not that far back when Powerball jacked up their odds to 1 in nearly 200M and how that was supposed to bring those record jackpots, those 500M jackpots... What happened to that? Oh right.
so with bigger jack pots(supposedly) will any pay for the power play option?
This is the first run that is going to be all $2 tickets so we will reach $300 million faster than this last run of $336 million. I say 40,60,80,100,125,150,175,200,250,325 so 10 rollovers and that will be a record. We might see a new record on the 11th drawing. just my two cents. Good luck!-weshar75
SORRY WESHAR75,,,,, I HAVE PLANS TO WIN SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 50 AND 200 MILLION
....PERHAPS AFTER , YOUR PREDICTION WILL COME TO THE SURFACE 
hopefully we can get a winner out of mm Tuesday.me.
Kyokushin karate a.k.a.
"the strongest karate" OSU!
Well JoeBigLotto, a search for "$500,000,000 jackpot" produces 8 pages of previous discussions so you're hardly 'the first guy here to write about $500,000,000 jackpot, nor is everybody 'copying you'.
Like weshar said. If the PB jackpot snowballed that quickly starting with 1$ bets, i can't imagine whats gonna happen with 2$. I can see an easy 500 mill++ coming soon.
I say.. 40..65.. 95.. 130.. .175.. 230.. 300.. 380.. 465.. 550
(if it were to go that high obviously)
im going to play mm more then pb only when pb is below $100 mil. $2 seems to much for anything less then $100mil(im greedy so what). any ways pb this roll wont get over $400mil cause im going to snatch it before it reaches $200mil, well thats the plan.
seems like lately only people on the coasts win. sucks to be in the middle.
Completely agree.. but that's y I'm gonna win.. lol.. time for somebody from the Midwest to win!!!!
Um, no. Your home state of Ohio has a disproportionate number of Mega Millions and Powerball winners. For a while there, people were making accusations about the lottery being fixed because so many winners came from Ohio.
Look here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here — just to name a few.
People have been complaining about "other people" winning the lottery since the lottery began. I think no amount of brilliant logic and reasoning will ever see the end of it.
I agree. Also take into account the population of each state. If there are more people in a particular state there might be more winners in that state because more people play.
There will always be a sector of the lotto playing public that cannot grasp fundamental "reasoning", or "logic".
Sadly for these disgruntled players, common sense and intelligence will always elude them.
Better to just pity them........... maybe say a prayer or two............. in hopes that one day they will awaken from their skewed delusions.
Most, if not all, casino games have less than 50% payout. Most online lottery games pay out in the same range, while scratchers pay out between approximately 60-75%.
Less people in the middle.
The following is just "coastal counties" and does not include counties that are close to, but not bordering, the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans:
"In the United States, coastal counties constitute only 17 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 53 percent of the total population."
Source: NOAA National Ocean Service
Hang in there Todd Vader .......... I waited patiently for the Pennsylvania "jackpot drought" to end ........... there are other adults on Lottery Post that do the same!
Keep up the great work Fearless Lottery Leader!
and just to keep up my incentive to play (responsibly in my budget), I visited Bentley Pittsburgh yesterday after my Dr. appointment. Anyone that thinks that Bentley's are just overpriced cars ..... as soon as I opened the door to walk in, the aroma of the finest leather that I have ever enjoyed welcomed me inside. It was amazing! Pictures do not do these works of art justice. The craftsmanship is just awesome! Hand crafted with obvious pride! I do not consider it the least bit ostentatious to keep old world craftsmanship alive!!!!!!!
That's what makes it so imporbable that the big jackpot winner for Powerball was from Rhode Island considering Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York and Florida make up about 50% of the Powerball sales in a given week.
This just proves the randomness of these drawings.
Pennsylvania had a very long "jackpot drought" until recently.
The LOTTERY BALLS could really care less what you or I think or speculate, about a states population density, coastal areas, volume of sales........ blah, blah, blah, blah.
If your not happy with the results, simply vote your opinion by not playing in the first place. End of story.
WWWBUKTN was only refering to the laws of probability! Winners from "small" States simply beat the odds. That is all 3W's was telling us ...............
Not sure why this is a problem ..................
I wonder how many 2 million pb winners we will see tomorrow? I doubt if we will see a jp winner for pb tomorrow.
Kyokushin Karate a.k.a.
The strongest karate! OSU!
IL, PA, NY and FL made up 35% of the last draw's sales, while RI accounted for only 0.7%.
When California joined Mega Millions the MUSL fed the same "Potential $500,000,000 Jackpots" hype to the media.
Hasn't even come close.
I think I understand where your going with this. Because of a higher volume of sales in these states, the leaping lotto balls were supposed to do an abrupt turnaround to produce a win in one of these states.
Apparently we need to do a better job at TRAINING THESE BALLS, to go where their supposed to, based upon the demographics and sales volume.
Shame on these disobedient lotto balls....what nerve they have!!!
"Conspiracy Theory" #287
It is always interesting to see what happens with Powerball & Mega Millions ...........
Conventional statistical wisdom would say that Pennsylvania players would have an advantage, but until November 19, 2011, the last Powerball Jackpot sold in Pennsylvania was February 28, 2009 & Pennsylvania has yet to sell a Mega Millions Jackpot winner .............
Just when you think that Powerball should grow to very large jackpots, we will probably see some "lower" jackpots won!
That is what keeps it interesting for me ................ anything can and will happen ........... and just when you think that you have seen everything ........... something unexpected happens ............. I think that we have Counties in Pennsylvania that are bigger in size and population than Rhode Island!
I play for fun & joined Lottery Post for the same reason ..............
You hit the nail on the head dpoly, play for FUN! After that if lady luck is on your side, that's an extra perk.
I totally agree, jeffrey. No one on my dead end street has won a jackpot. But on all the other streets, from New York to Los Angeles, there have been winners. Must be some kind of conspiracy. Sucks to live on my dead end street.
I doubt we'll see very many, if any, billion dollar jackpots. The odds of a rollover in the last jackpot were about 66% (Poisson distribution randomized calculation). The odds of it getting to $336 million were lower than this. The odds of rollovers decrease as sales increase, but even if three more drawings had the same level as the last, we would have had barely a 25% chance of reaching one billion beginning with a $325 million jackpot.
By the way the expectation value on this last jackpot was only 0.7. Usually at this level, under the old conditions, the expectation value was closer to 1.0, almost making the huge lotteries, "good bets."
I would think we'd need to be well over half a billion to see similar expectation values.
No problem at all....... just do not want the thousands of others LP members to get the impression that the the lottery is "rigged" because of these outcome scenarios.
Seems like no one is truly happy with the results unless they were the winner.
Thank you my friend ........... this is so much more pleasant than yesterday's threads ......... your post reminds me of my Irish friends that I used to work with ........ they would actually let me have some of their "Irish Luck" once in a while .............. and we would all have a laugh
I predict that it will get interestinger and interestinger ............
and that we might even experience dejá vu all over again .............
Hey, what are you trying to do ............. get us to think ................. now stop that
Just kidding
You can never laugh to much dpoly........always remember this! Also great for your heart and health.
Not quite.
If you reached into a bag of 100 balls, 99 of which were colored red and one of which was colored black, you'd expect to pick out a red ball 99% of the time. The winner in RI, based on volume of tickets sold alone, was the black ball in this case. I don't think that it's a conspiracy at all, merely statistically unlikely.
If a third of the tickets are sold in NY, FL, PA and IL, I'd guess that a winner should come from those states a third of the time.
Those ding dong dandy statistical anomalies !!!!!!!!
That was exactly my point though. By no means do I think it's rigged and by one of the smallest contributing states having won one of the biggest jackpots is only further proof. Not sure why people took exception to what I said when I was just trying to point out that it's as random as it gets. If people are unhappy with the results unless they win then their goign to live a life of being unhappy as they could live a hundred lifetimes and never sniff a prize above a free ticket for hitting the Powerball.
I came close ONCE and it wasn't based on my numbers as I didn't hit a single number. I lived in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin for two years and bought my ten tickets on the same day one hour after the 100 Miracles group bought their tickets from the exact same store called Ma & Pa's in Fond Du Lac. When I went in for a pack of smokes in the morning and saw all the news trucks outside the building I couldn't have driven home any faster but it just wasn't meant to be. It's funny how you feel when your odds go from 1 in 175,000,000 to 1 in 100,000 or so as they sell a ton of tickets at this place since it's on the "Miracle Mile" where they have had a ton of lotto wins. I was bummed at what could have been.
The Powerball and all the other "true" lotteries are random. No way they would cheat when they are making money hand over foot for drawing some balls.
SANITY is back on LP.
I can't believe we think machines meticulously designed to give random numbers have the ability to factor in demographics and population density?
Wanna win? Pick the winning numbers and I promise you no matter what your race, color, creed or economic circumstance you will be the winner.
precisely accurate. if you pick your own numbers, which you should do, quick pics are for the weak minded, it cannot possibly matter what state or where or when you buy the ticket. if you ask for a quick pic then all that matters is the speed of the clerks hand to determine what numbers you get stuck with. which would you rather have. being at the mercy of a patel with slow or quick fingers, or your own ingenuity at picking a combination. this rigged nonsense or lucky state theory is bogus.
Not so my friend.......you could reach into that bag 1000 times, and pull out 999 black balls. Statistically unlikely ........but still probable.
And those little lotto balls...... don't keep track of where the majority of tickets are sold. If a third of tickets are sold in NY, FL, PA, AND IL they may never win for 5 years....or win every week for 5 years. Thats the beauty and allure of this concept we call the "LOTTERY".
I it would nice to see that happen. I guess the tickets start at $5 and the starting jackpot would be 80 to 100 million to start with. I would try it. But lets be honest here , just say if that ever does happen and somewhere from the north once again hits. There would be chaos beyond compare. Sometimes i think there is paraody in this lotto fever. I am just speaking for me , it seems to be the lottery officals to me already know which state is goona hit. . I am not hating on the people from RI , i am not , i am truly happy for then. Lets be real about the last 3 big jackpots have came from the north , i find that fishy to me. Conspiacy theories maybe maybe not. But you have to wonder , is the current system fair? To me there is completive unbalance. When you look at it from a far , their is paraody. Ask yourself why does one region of the country gets the breaks and the other regions don't. To me the system needs to be changed if not the same area of the country wil keep hitting the big jackpots. If another northern regional state hit again , the lottery officals for the MM and PB should be fired! There is no equal playing for people who play. Tell me when was the last time recently NC , VA , for example has it a jackpot. And don't tell me 250,000 or 500,000 there doesn't count in my book. All i am saying the system need to be changed and changed quickly ,because if not we are going to have the same results everytime a big jackpot is won. They come up with a system that all 50 states have the same chance to win. Bigger states will always have the advantage over the smaller states keep that mind