By Todd Northrop
One Powerball ticket holder in New Hampshire is the winner of the $559.7 million jackpot prize, the 8th-largest in US lottery history.
The winning numbers, drawn Saturday night, were 12, 29, 30, 33, and 61, with Powerball number 26. The Power Play number was 3.
The owner of the winning ticket can choose the annuity option in which 30 payments are made over 29 years, with each annual payment increasing over time. Most, however, choose the cash option. In this case, take-home cash would be $352 million.
The winning ticket was sold at Reeds Ferry Market, a small, independent convenience store located in Merrimack, New Hampshire, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Concord.
Since the store opened at 5:30 a.m. Sunday, dozens of excited regulars have stopped by to congratulate the owner and chat about the win, said store owner Sam Safa. He said he doesn't know the identity of the winner, but hopes one of the regulars from the over 100-year-old store won the nation's 8th-largest lottery jackpot.
"I'm very excited and overwhelmed," said Safa. He said that by selling the ticket it felt like he himself had won. The store will receive a $75,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.
The final jackpot amount was about $10 million less than what the lotteries were expecting. On Friday, the Powerball jackpot estimate was increased to $570 million, but as the final amount of $559.7 illustrates, that was only an estimation. It is not common for the lotteries to overestimate the jackpot to this degree.
In addition to the New Hampshire jackpot winner, 7 lucky players matched the first 5 numbers for a $1,000,000 prize: 1 from Connecticut, 2 from New Jersey, 1 from South Carolina, 2 from Texas, and 1 from Washington.
None of the second-prize tickets were purchased with the Power Play option for an extra $1. If they were, the prize would have been doubled to $2 million.
Power Play is available in all jurisdictions that sell Powerball except California. By law, California awards all prizes on a pari-mutuel basis, meaning the prizes will change each drawing based on the number of tickets sold and the number of tickets that won at each prize level.
115 tickets matched four white numbers plus the Powerball and won $50,000. Of those tickets, 15 were purchased with the Power Play option, increasing the prize to $150,000, and 11 of the tickets were sold in California, where the prize was worth $25,801 this drawing.
In all, more than 4 million tickets, including the jackpot winner, won prizes from Saturday's drawing.
Last year, a woman from Chicopee, Mass., won the $758 million Powerball jackpot and received a lump-sum payment of $480 million after choosing the cash option. In 2016, three winners from California, Florida and Tennessee split a jackpot prize of nearly $1.6 billion.
The game started as Lotto America in the late 1980s and was changed and renamed Powerball in the early 1990s. It's one of two big jackpot games played in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The other one, Mega Millions, found a winner Friday. A single Mega Millions ticket holder in Florida won the $450 million jackpot prize, the fourth biggest in the multi-state lottery's 15-year history. The winning ticket was sold at a 7-Eleven in Port Richey, a Gulf Coast town northwest of Tampa.
The winning Mega Millions numbers, drawn Friday night, were 28, 30, 39, 59, and 70, with Mega Ball number 10. Payments made over 29 years, with each annual payment 5 percent bigger than the previous one, will be made under the annuity option. The one-time cash payment would yield $281 million.
The odds of winning jackpot prizes in both games were astronomical. For the Powerball jackpot, they were 1 in 292 million. The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot were worse: 1 in 302.6 million, according to multi-state lottery website USA Mega (www.usamega.com).
The prizes for both lotteries are back down to $40 million, with drawings scheduled Tuesday for Mega Millions and Wednesday for Powerball.
was it Steve Player ???????
Congratulations to the winner. I hope he, she, group, take all the proper steps in their announcement and management of their winnings.
Congrats to the Winner!
All Birthday Numbers but Two!
NH always wins.
Congratulations to the winners of Power Ball and Mega Millions! When will they come forward and accept their prizes? Were the tickets quick pick or not? Could the winners be members of Lottery Post?
Reeds Market, just a typical Mom n Pop store in northern New England. Hopefully it is one of their regulars who stops for coffee or some other beverage everyday.
For those of us that have or still do frequented these lil places, on a daily basis in our communities, we appreciate the clerks and know how much that extra $75K will mean to the owners.
Congrats to the winning ticket holder(s).
It amazes me that nobody won either MM or PB for 23 draws and then both are won back-to-back in the same week.
Also, the NYS Lotto ($9.2 mil) was won (non-qp) on Saturday as well as the CT Lotto ($1.7 mil) being won on Tuesday 1/2/18.
Congratulations to the winner/s!!!!
570 million? I guess they over estimated a little bit!
I'm not going to keep playing if it keeps dying before getting to $1B
That's how we roll BL!
I wondered the same thing, and I went immediately to his web site as I know he would have posted it right away, but there was nothing there. I'm sure he was playing strong, but the ticket sale was out of his travel path.
Congratulations to the winner and remember......just breathe. ....*******
I've just been looking over that Steve Player website. Wondering if his methods work.
Hey BuyLow, You're right!
There was a Powerball winner on 7/30/16 from Raymond, NH who won $487M!
They claimed it as the "Robin Egg 2016 Nominee Trust". Pictured are their attorneys.
Love the name of that trust. My mother wants to name hers the pink poodle trust. Lol I may call mine "Girls just wanna have fun!"
I lost ($3, may as well win $150k instead of $50k).
I figured it would be a waste, but I wanted to raise the probability of me winning from zero to non-zero.
What a wonderful way to start the new year off. Congrats to all the winners!
The winner from New Hampshire will form a trust to remain anonymous. These days, anyone who can remain anonymous will do everything he or she can to remain anonymous.
Of course his method works. He makes money every time some schmuck buys one of his "systems".
We used to have a dog and the Vet's name was Dr. Barkin.
Exactly! I found a thread here at LP on it, and I looked into some details. Player must be making money hand over fist from the uninformed public.
Ha!
Why don't they just wait to see how much money they really took in before they say what the actual Jackpot is?
I don't like the advertised Jackpot and then you have the Cash option!
Isn't it suppose to be just one Jackpot,THE JACKPOT instead of CASH Option.
Sound like to me they want to steal what is left over! LOL
If they can wait until 2:00 AM to post the results.
Surely they can get the money right and post what they took in as well, instead of having an estimated Jackpot and the Jackpot they really want you to have!
C'MON MAN! LOL
Merrimack, New Hampshire. Does anyone remember the American Civil War's Naval Battle between the Monitor v. Merrimack?
The entire Civil War was a prelude to World War 1. They both consumed men at an alarming rate.
Today America is suffering under a flu epidemic. Thankfully it will not be as bad as the Spanish flu of 1919. Which killed more people worldwide than World War 1 did.
So it's off a few million. Who cares when it's that high. Even the starting jackpot is way more than I need.
As far as the jackpot and cash option...it's been explained ad nauseum.
The cash option is the REAL jackpot. But if a winner decides they want an annuity, they can choose to collect over 30 years. Steal what is left over? There IS no left over.
There are even a few scratchoff tickets that offer an annuity, or a cash option.
LOL.