Seeing so many impressive stories of new multi-millionaires, have you ever wondered what the odds of winning the Powerball lottery are? I can tell in advance that it is not an easy game, especially with that promising jackpot, but that there are other opportunities involved. That said, this guide will explain how to improve your odds of winning Powerball and bring everything about the secondary prizes and its multiplier.
Quick Jump
What Are Your Odds of Winning the Powerball Jackpot?
Your odds of winning the Powerball lottery jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338, which means that every ticket contains one possible combination out of 292,201,338 possibilities. That is quite a lot, explaining why Powerball is a difficult lottery. The odds come from its format of 5 out of 70 numbers plus 1 among 26 Powerball numbers that are mandatory for the jackpot.
Our team has already compared the Mega Millions vs Powerball odds if you are interested in enriching your knowledge.
When you buy Powerball lottery tickets, you are not only going for the jackpot. The game still has some decent secondary prizes, including the second prize of $1 million that disregards the Powerball number completely. Let’s take a look at your odds of winning the other prizes of Powerball.
Your Odds of Winning Other Powerball Prizes
We can see that the two first secondary prizes of the Powerball lottery are quite interesting, especially considering that we have the Power Play multiplier:
| MATCH | PRIZE | ODDS |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | $1,000,000 | 1 in 11,688,053.52 |
| 4 + Powerball | $50,000 | 1 in 913,129.18 |
| 4 | $100 | 1 in 36,525.17 |
| 3 + Powerball | $100 | 1 in 14,494.11 |
| 3 | $7 | 1 in 579.76 |
| 2 + Powerball | $7 | 1 in 701.33 |
| 1 + Powerball | $4 | 1 in 91.98 |
| Powerball only | $4 | 1 in 38.32 |
Overall, your chances of winning any prize in Powerball are 1 in 24.87, decent for that type of game. The odds of 1 in 11,688,053.52 to win $1 million are also better than in many other games in which $1 million is the jackpot. However, the best characteristic is reserved for those who are willing to pay $1 more for the Power Play.
The Power Play is an optional add-on – with the exception of Idaho, where it is automatically added – that may multiply your winnings up to 10x, except for the jackpot. Therefore, the second prize may go up to $10 million and the third prize $100,000. These are the odds of each Power Play multiplier if you win the lottery:
| 2X | 3X | 4X | 5X | 10X | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Odds with 10x multiplier | 1 in 1.79 | 1 in 3.31 | 1 in 14.33 | 1 in 21.5 | 1 in 43 |
| Odds without 10x multiplier | 1 in 1.75 | 1 in 3.23 | 1 in 14 | 1 in 21 | N/A |
The “odds without 10x multiplier” exists because that alternative ceases to exist whenever the jackpot reaches $150 million. There is little to no improvement in the overall odds of the Power Play multipliers.
Then, it is clear that Powerball has difficult odds but enough opportunities to be tempting even if we do not hope to win the jackpot.
Does Playing Powerball Online Change Your Odds?
Thanks to the online lottery sites, virtually anyone can play Powerball from outside the United States. That possibility is either carried out by lottery agent websites that purchase real tickets on our behalf or through bets on lottery betting sites. In both cases, your odds are the exact same ones as if you were playing at a local retailer in the US.
Still, I recommend checking the advantages of playing Powerball online. It does not impact your odds, but with discounts and bonuses you can buy more tickets, and that is a proven method to improve your odds of winning the lottery.
Can You Improve Your Odds of Winning Powerball?
The more tickets you buy, the better your chances of winning any lottery, including Powerball. Of course, it is not viable to buy all the combinations of the lottery, but you will at least cover more combinations.
First off, you may try different lottery strategies that you believe can have an influence on the Powerball results, regardless of what math says. You may choose to go with lottery predictions, for example, and those are all ways that require a strong belief in the influence of what is considered to be logic.
Fortunately, there is one way out of simply buying more tickets that provenly improves your odds of winning the Powerball. When you play on the best lottery syndicates available online, you get hundreds of entries for a really low cost. Therefore, you are investing far less and covering more combinations with a single click.
One great example of a good lottery syndicate is the one available on LottoAgent, which also offers it to other games, like Euromillions.
5 Things More Likely Than Winning Powerball
Looking at the odds is almost never enough to have a proper dimension of how lotteries can be difficult. In order to make you fully understand what the odds of winning the Powerball mean, let’s compare it with five things that are more likely to occur:
- Killing Vending Machine – The odds of being killed by a vending machine, according to statistics is 1 in 112 million.
- Drowning – There is a low-risk chance of drowning, more precisely, 1 in 2,000,000.
- Becoming a Bitcoin Millionaire – Believe it or not, the odds would be 1 in 1,000.
- Having Quadruplets – Are you ready to nanny that many children? The odds are 1 in 15 million.
- Dating a Millionaire – These odds are just 1 in 250.
Does that mean that winning the Powerball lottery is impossible? Of course not, people win it all the time. The thing is that statistics and odds are just a reference and quite useless to base your decisions on. After all, how many of your friends dated a millionaire, or became a Bitcoin millionaire themselves?
The thing about the probabilities of winning the Powerball lottery is that you need luck, nothing else. Your very first game could be a jackpot winner, or it might be your 1,000th. The only true requirement to win is to be playing it.
Should You Play Powerball Despite the Odds?
It is true that the odds of winning the Powerball lottery are tough, but you only need to win it once and your life will change. That applies even if you win with the starting jackpot, and that is why it is such a popular game. Besides, there are great secondary prizes as well, including a $1 million second prize, and that should be enough to be thrilled to play it.
