Thats five matching numbers 1-55 and the Powerball match a 1-42 chance. Odds of winning the Powerball Jackpot are 1 in 146,107,962 With the addition of Florida to the PowerBall (Jan, 2009). The probablity has changed. It is now:
Five matching numbers 1-59 and the Powerball match a 1-39 chance
Odds of winning the Powerbal Jackpot are 1 in 195,249,054
Chat with our AI personalities
To win the jackpot there are 5,006,386 combinations for the five numbers x 35 powerball choices, so there are 175,223,510 combinations for picking the jackpot combination.
Before the drawing, you must buy a ticket with the number on it that will be drawn. Then hold on to the ticket, so that you can present it after the drawing. If you do this, then you're guaranteed to win the jackpot.
The only sure way to do that is to buy one ticket for every possible combination. Then you're absolutely positively definitely guaranteed to hold a winning ticket. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get the whole jackpot, however. There may be other winning tickets besides yours, and if there are, you have to split the jackpot with all the others.
Very poor. New York Lotto, for instance, is 6 balls in a field of 54, with two games played for a dollar. The odds of hitting the jackpot is thus 2 in 25,827,165.
The odds of winning are 10,000,000,000, to 1.