If you’ve ever dreamed of calling your own shots and making a $1 billion splash, Saturday night’s Powerball drawing might be your chance. The multi-state jackpot, the 14th-largest in U.S. history, has been rolling since Sept. 6 — 40 drawings without a winner.
Matching all five numbers plus the Powerball is a long shot—1 in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. Overall, your odds of winning any prize are slightly better, at 1 in 24.9. But USC math professor Ken Alexander points out that where you buy your ticket doesn’t improve your odds: “The chance that a given place will sell a winning lottery ticket is just related to how many tickets they sell.”
That said, if you want to improve your chances of not sharing the jackpot, Alexander has a tip: pick numbers beyond the typical birthday range. Since many players choose dates from 1 to 31, higher numbers tend to be less crowded.
In San Diego, local convenience stores and gas stations are already seeing long lines of hopeful players, each imagining what a billion-dollar win could mean—from beachfront mansions in La Jolla to gourmet dinners in the Gaslamp District, or even a private sailing adventure on San Diego Bay.
Powerball is a big game: played in 45 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. With a jackpot this size, Saturday night could be one for the history books—and maybe, just maybe, a local winner could make San Diego the next stop on the billion-dollar map.
–City News Service contributed to this report
