Talk:Powerball

odds
the odds should be explained, as in why, when there are only 42 numbers in the powerball, are the odds 68?

Because you need to calculate in the odds of not hitting the other numbers.

The odds entered were copied directly from documentation from MUSL. Juggaleaux 02:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Odds of just powerball:


 * $$\frac{55*54*53*52*51}{50*49*48*47*46}*42 = 68.9592$$

Odds of jackpot:


 * $${55 \choose 5}*42 = \frac{55!}{5!(55-5)!}*42 = \frac{55*54*53*52*51}{120}*42 = 146,107,962$$

the rest are similar

--vossman 18:03, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Why is it a factorial? Can't the same number show up more than once? thus (55^5) * 42 ? --70.111.218.254 14:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * No, each time a ball is drawn it is removed from the pot. --216.138.38.86 21:46, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The odds of winning the powerball as of 2009 are 1 in 195,249,054. That means that the section is incorrect because you should have a expected value of greater than $1 any time the jackpot is over the $195.249 million mark (actually the break even would be lower when you factor in the lesser prizes). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.45.144.94 (talk) 03:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

No, the expectation value should be based on the cash value, not the annuity value. The cash value is, according to MUSL, the amount of the money needed to fund the annuity. Historically it has varied with interest rates from 48% (or less) to 63% (or more) of the advertised annuity value. Because of changes in the structure of the annuity, the lower percentages operate today. Fluctuations in interest rates make it hard to predict the expectation value.   Solo Owl   06:04, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Analysis section
This section is very unencyclopedic in terms of tone and information, but one cannot deny that the information is interesting. Can anyone think of any ideas on how to fix it up? --Lunar Jesters (talk) 20:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

____________HOW MUCH MONEY FROM EACH TICKET GOES INTO THE JACKPOT AND HOW MUCH GOES INTO TAXES. ____________HOW MUCH TAX MONEY DOES IT BRING IN. HOW ARE THE TAXES SPENT.

Immortal Players
Initially, this section said, "Finally, one might argue that the only sensible reason to play the lottery is for a chance at the jackpot. If you were to live forever, a winning strategy would be only to buy tickets when the cash-payout after taxes is better than 146 million dollars, giving at least one-to-one odds on the jackpot.  At two Powerball drawings per week, you would average about 1.4 million years between jackpots.  However this assumes that the odds stay the same for millions of years, and, since the rules have changed three times in ten years, each time reducing the jackpot odds, the immortal player can expect to go much longer between jackpots."

This is incorrect. The chances of success in the lottery reach fifty-fifty at only 92.3 million attempts. At 146 million attempts, the chances of success are roughly 63.2%. This should read "giving at least one-to-one payout on the jackpot", indicating that, were you to make the attempt every time the payout was this large, you would get an average return on your one dollar of at least one dollar.

If one feels the need to include this section, one might also point out that such a player would have spent far more than he made, especially as there is a strong possibility that he will split the jackpot. Filksinger 16:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, don't forget a player only need to live that long if they could only afford to play $1 each drawing. They could cut the time in half buying two tickets each drawing.... Or garuntee a certain win if they bought 195 million tickets each time they played and hoping no one else did too. Heck if were at all possible, the player would have added $60 million to the base prize pool from just thier ticket sales. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.121.179.67 (talk) 03:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Georgia
I read in an article that the state of Georgia left Powerball in 1996 to join Mega Millions. Why did it left a certain lottery game just to join another? Couldn't Georgia play them both? 61.9.126.41

Ga left Powerball/MUSL in 1996 to join the then-Big Game (it actually had both major games briefly, before it was booted from MUSL). [RESPONSE - GA was not booted from Powerball, GA left voluntarily. As is often the case, personality conflicts caused the change]. [Did GA really leave Powerball voluntarily? Were they not given the option of leaving voluntarily so they would not be booted?][RESPONSE: GA was NOT asked to leave and is welcome back to the game at any time]. This was, in retrospect, unfortunate. Lotto Ga eventually became part of Lotto South, which was replaced with LOSE for Life (no cash option in Ga.) Had Ga stayed with Powerball, it might now have MUSL Hot Lotto (which like LS is a multi-state jackpot game with a cash option) instead of LOSE for Life. Hot Lotto began as a six-state game a few months after LS started; it now consists of nine states and the D.C. Lottery, and might eventually expand into MUSL states that probably would have joined, or be considering, LS. (Oklahoma) will join Hot Lotto in January 2008.) South Carolina took a serious look at LS, but never joined. Louisiana might have wanted to join LS following Hurricane Katrina (much like NY joining Big Game/Mega Millions after 9/11, and also approving video lottery. 216.179.123.145 14:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Why join Powerball?
It's been said that part of the reason the state of Florida has yet to join a game like Powerball is because it would hurt the states own lottery. If this is so, why have so many other states joined, and does anyone know how it affected those states lotteries? [RESPONSE - State games under both PB and MM typically lose 30% in sales, but they more than make up for it in PB and MM sales (IL being the only exception). The multi-state games are also more profitable since the costs of the drawing (studio and uplink) are shared. Advertising costs may also be shared. A state keeps 100% of the profit from the multi-state games though MM states pay a small fee ($20,000 or so) a year for draw production. For Powerball, the Multi-State Lottery Association earns income from several sources and actually pays a state to join the game. MUSL pays for all expenses and then, as a non-profit group, is required to distribute its excess earnings to the member lotteries.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.105.21.234 (talk) 18:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Minimum jackpot?
In many other lotteries (like Euromillions) there is a guarantee that more correct numbers mean a higher payout. How is that handeled at Powerball? The minimim jackpot is $15M, so with more than 60 jackpot winners (maybe because of another fortune cookie), the payout would be lower than the $250K you would receive withoutb the correct Powerball. Will the payout be increased to $250K in this case, so that people are not "punished" for having the correct Powerball? 84.131.220.135 11:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

About Winner(s) of March 15 2008 drawing
Greetings ....

UPDATE - March 18, 2008 -- Winners of March 15 2008 drawing officially identified. See main article.

In the most recent edit of the Powerball page by me - User:Fgf2007 - I removed the words "eight women" from a sentence that was describing the winning ticket for the $276.3 million Powerball lottery drawing of March 15, 2008.

I did this for the following reasons ....

TRUE - that one winning ticket has been sold. TRUE - that there have been stories told by major media entities about eight women who may (emphasis on may) have that sole winning ticket.

HOWEVER - As of 11:45 PM EDT, Monday March 17 2008, Lottery officials in West Virginia, where the winning ticket was sold, have not made any announcement in so far as receiving and verifying a winning ticket. Nor have they confirmed the identities of whoever the winner/winners may be.

THEREFORE - Until such time that MUSL and West Virginia lottery officials verify the ticket and positively identify the winner(s), no specific mention of a winner should be made in the main Powerball Wiki-article.

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank Fgf2007 (talk) 03:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Winning Expectations Section?
Should this section be included? This winning expection theory is not an accepted way to view any lottery game. It would seem to be more of a personal concept of risk evaluation; someone trying to push the concept mainstream. Others have theories about how numbers drawn mix colored squares in a matrix or draw little animal shapes. While this one is at least based on some math, is it all relevant (except to its creator)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.216.69.22 (talk) 18:39, 16 August 2008 (UTC) What exactly are the calculations about the winnings based upon? For example, if the winning approximate jackpot is $200M, the payout being $.68 on the dollar, would the actual payout not be $136M before taxes as opposed to the $100M shown? Nothing in this section makes much sense. Where are these numbers from? It may be reasonable to show what people have actually won and walked away with. 64.253.174.2 (talk) 21:13, 19 August 2009 (UTC)EP

Assumption all Powerball States going to Mega Millions
Why is there the assumption all Powerball states are going to Mega Millions? Are there references or citations confirming these Lotteries are selling Mega Millions soon? IE... The Florida Lottery has not commited to selling Mega Millions and has no plans to do so at this time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.121.179.67 (talk) 18:19, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

January 2012 Update
I heard that Powerball revised the rules and odds on January 15th 2012. I've added the update tags to let readers know the current article has incorrect information. 192.5.109.34 (talk) 05:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Powerball & Megamillions
Needs attention: The Megamillions and Powerball table in Megamillions was missing some members as is the table presently in Powerball. Also, some of the dates differ in the tables. Which are correct? BiPolarCurious (talk) 14:01, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. I see the table also lists 42 jurisdictions despite the opening paragraph says and the accompanying colored map shows 44 jurisdictions (although the map does not show DC or the USVI as participants).  That means there are two missing jurisdictions from the list: DC, and another.  Can someone find the other and update to include it along with DC? Grammarcop1 (talk) 20:29, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Wyoming
According to the Wyoming Lottery website, Wyoming does offer the Powerball. Axeman (talk) 20:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

California
California needs a color update in the Powerball/Mega Million map to fuchsia. California is currently blue even though it has recently joined Powerball. 31.208.9.172 (talk) 16:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Airing times
The article states: "Powerball drawings are held Wednesdays and Saturdays at 10:59 p.m. Eastern time."

I feel that this should be changed to read The drawings are AIRED on Wed and Sat nights. The drawing itself occurs earlier and there are 3 feeds, 10:59 p.m., 11:00 p.m., and 11:01 p.m. Eastern time so as to be more flexible for stations airing the drawings.

I know when I worked at a TV station ABC would end their programming at 9:59:46 giving us 14 seconds for headlines and then we would go straight to the feed being sent down. When ABC was airing sports and it ran over I had to record the feed for playback later. I think this also account's for the cut off time of 11 (Eastern) so they can have the drawing and prepare the taped for transmission.

Kielhofer 19:34, 15 May 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kielhofer (talk • contribs)

45 lotteries?
This is in the opening paragraph, but elsewhere it says "43 states", and the chart only has those 43 plus the Virgin Islands. That makes 44.

DC is mentioned later in the article - is that the key? Why isn't it in the chart then? And how about rewording somewhere to explicitly state "43 states + DC + VI"?

And what of Guam and Saipan? If they're not participating, that should at least be mentioned the way it is for Puerto Rico. 209.172.25.103 (talk) 00:27, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

odds again
why are the odds for hitting the "powerball only" (choose-a-number-from 1-to-35) not,, ahem,, 1 in 35? thanks. T-303 (talk) 03:28, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

is it spelled out somewhere on 'pedia and I'm missing it?
so, I am looking at http://www.durangobill.com/PowerballOdds.html. this site's odds info seems to match the present info in the article.

can I ask the question this way: are the odds of hitting the just the powerball irrespective of the white balls not 1 in 35? I just need to get a basic fact or two straight then tell me about the odds of "missing" your 5 chances out of 59 factor.

what is the signifigance of 3,162,510?

I will return and ask these questions more clearly later. or apologize if I was missing something obvious. thx. T-303 (talk) 05:03, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Adding Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico has entered the MUSL (http://www.elnuevodia.com/juegodepowerballseintegraraalmenudelaloteriaelectronicadepuertorico-1861934.html). But as link is in Spanish, should I wait until an English source appears? Richietjpr (talk) 19:55, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Please update the map to include Puerto Rico, USA. Reference: PR preparing to play Powerball — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.48.241.37 (talk) 23:38, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

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Why do you say the jackpots chances are 1:292,201,338?
Shouldn't it be 69^5*26=40,664,815,074? רן כהן (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The 5 numbers chosen out of the set of 69 must all be different, and the order of the 5 numbers doesn't matter. So, the chances of the jackpot are 1 in
 * $${69 \choose 5}\cdot 26=\frac{69\cdot 68\cdot 67\cdot 66\cdot 65}{5!} \cdot 26 = 292,201,338.$$
 * Spacepotato (talk) 23:14, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, but tell me - if its 1$-2$ per ticket, shouldn't you take a huge loan and fill *every* ticket possible? Only 292,201,338$-584,402,676$ investment for 1,500,500,500$ (before taxes)... רן כהן (talk) 07:44, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It could work. There are three problems with this idea:
 * $1.5 billion is the total cash payment if you take the prize as an annuity. The lump sum prize is only $930 million.
 * You may have to share the jackpot.
 * Taxes (but, according to the IRS, gambling losses are deductible from your taxable income.)
 * There are also two additional benefits with this idea:
 * The jackpot may be higher than $930 million, if many more tickets are sold before the draw.
 * The 292 million tickets you buy will also add to the jackpot.
 * According to lottoreport.com, the lump sum value of the unpaid jackpot on Jan 9 was $588 million. Call this sum Σ, call the probability of winning 1/N (so N = 292201338), call the number of tickets sold since the Jan 9 draw M, call the fraction of the ticket value that goes into the jackpot pool f (f = 0.325 according to the article Powerball), call the price of a ticket P (P = $2), and call the expected value of the minor, non-jackpot, prizes associated with a ticket Q (approximately $0.32.).  Then buying up all N tickets will be profitable (before tax) if θ (Σ + f P (M + N)) + Q N > P N, where θ is the expected value of 1/(1 + X) and X is the number of jackpot winners apart from you.
 * Assuming everybody picks their ticket at random, X will be approximately Poisson distributed with parameter M/N. If X is exactly Poisson distributed with parameter M/N, it can be proved that
 * $${\mathbb E}\frac{1}{1+X} \le \frac{4/3}{1+(M/N)},\qquad (*)$$
 * so, using this approximation for θ, a necessary condition to have a profit is that
 * $$\frac{(4/3) (\Sigma + f P (M + N))}{1 + (M/N)}> (P - Q) N,$$
 * which can be rewritten as
 * $$ \frac{4\Sigma}{3 P - 4 f P - 3 Q} - N > M.$$
 * Plugging in the values for Σ, P, Q, f, and N, this gives an upper bound of around 672 million for M. So, for your idea to work, there need to be no more than 672 million tickets sold, apart from the 292 million tickets that you buy yourself.  Using a more precise computation for θ in place of the approximation (*), it appears that the upper limit is around 616 to 617 million tickets. Spacepotato (talk) 10:09, 13 January 2016 (UTC) (edited 23:28, 13 January 2016 (UTC))
 * Another question is whether there is an expected profit from buying just one ticket. In this case, the condition for a net pre-tax profit is θ (Σ + f P (M + 1)) / N + Q > P, since your chance of winning the jackpot is 1/N.  Making the same approximations as before gives
 * $$\frac{4 \Sigma + 4 f P - 3 (P-Q) N}{3P - 3Q - 4 f P} > M,$$
 * which gives an upper bound for M of 360 million or so. It seems that more than this many tickets have been sold though. Spacepotato (talk) 10:30, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It interests me - we usually say that's unreasonable to buy lottery, because the chances in losing is greater than the amount you win. Is it still unreasonable in this scenario (i.e. should a strictly non gambler person actually buy lottery now?) רן כהן (talk) 21:40, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
 * As I explained above, it depends on how many other tickets have been sold and how much of each ticket price goes into the jackpot pool. In this case, I think the answer is not to buy.  (There are also other factors I didn't consider above, such as taxes and the fact that not everybody picks their ticket at random.  Taxes make the lottery much less profitable for the player.) Spacepotato (talk) 23:48, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 January 2016
In the section concerning the major jackpot wins, it states the January 13, 2016 jackpot of 1.6 billion was won by 3 players, all in California. That is incorrect and the correct information is a few lines further down where it does list the 3 states with winners. The only change needed is to remove "all in California". Thank you  Irene Bubier.

216.227.90.36 (talk) 18:14, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Removed the whole entry. Thanks --allthefoxes (Talk) 18:20, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

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Unclear sentence
The introductory section contains this sentence:

"Since October 7, 2015, the game has used a 5/69 (white balls) + 1/26 (Powerballs) matrix from which winning numbers are chosen, resulting in odds of 1 in 292,201,338 of winning a jackpot per play."

But nobody has any idea of what the word "matrix" means in this sentence.

Also: Nobody knows what "5/69" or "1/26" means. This is one of the worst sentences ever to appear in Wikipedia.

Therefore nobody understands this sentence.

I hope that someone knowledgeable about the subject will rewrite the sentence so that it is clear. 2601:200:C000:1A0:2979:6874:1986:631D (talk) 15:57, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Edit request
- the old odds should be deleted.
 * What I think should be changed:

- the 'any prize' part of the 'new odds' should also be deleted.

- updating odds on this page is crucial to ensure accuracy and reliability for customers.
 * Why it should be changed:


 * References supporting the possible change (format using the "cite" button):

GeorgeatTLClotteries (talk) 05:25, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Why should the old odds section be removed? It is clearly posted as old, and shouldn't it be retained for historical information? Encoded   Talk 💬 16:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)


 * ❌ given your user page disclosure, the source cited, and the edit request's content, your request appears to be related to Powerball (Australia), which is the Wikipedia article about the Australian Powerball rather than this article (Powerball) which is about the American lottery of the same name. This request should be made at Talk:Powerball (Australia). - Aoidh (talk) 16:06, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

2001:5B0:8682:2780:C474:A191:699E:6E4A (talk) 12:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)