“The Powerball® jackpot that started rolling three months ago has become the world’s largest lotto prize ever offered. Game leaders increased the Powerball jackpot estimate Friday morning to a record $1.6 billion for the Saturday, Nov. 5 drawing. The jackpot has a cash value of $782.4 million,” Powerball said in a press release on Friday.
“Saturday’s estimated jackpot has surpassed the world record amount previously set by Powerball in 2016, when tickets in California, Florida and Tennessee won a $1.586 billion jackpot.”
People who are interested in playing Powerball are required to choose five numbers from 1 to 69 for the white balls. For the red Powerball, players must choose one number from 1 to 26, according to the Powerball website.
USA Mega has been keeping track of Powerball winning numbers since 2015, and its website has a list of numbers that are most likely to be drawn. According to USA Mega, among the first five numbers to pick, the most common number drawn since 2015 is 61. Other likely numbers according to the USA Mega tracker include 32, 21, 63, 69, 23, 36 and 39.
For the final Powerball number, USA Mega’s tracker shows that the most likely number drawn is 24, which has been drawn 45 times since 2015. Following behind is 24, 18, 4, 13, 21, 6 and 10.
Todd Northrop, the owner of USA Mega provided some expert advice to Newsweek on specific numbers that may increase a player’s chances of winning.
“Because every combination of numbers has exactly the same chance of winning the jackpot, choose numbers that fewer people tend to play so that if you do win, you likely won’t have to share your jackpot with others,” Northrop told Newsweek.
“For example, if you play 1-2-3-4-5 with Powerball 6 and you happen to win, then you would probably be sharing your jackpot with hundreds of other people who played those same numbers. But if you play 13-38-43-65-67 with Powerball 13 and you happen to win, then you’ll probably take home the entire jackpot yourself.”
Northrop also explained that picking numbers higher than 31 may be beneficial due to the fact that many individuals play numbers associated with birthdays or anniversaries. Additionally, Northrop said the number 13 is always a solid choice, since many see it as “unlucky.”
“Finally, I chose a Powerball that is the same as one of the first five numbers, because many people mistakenly think that the Powerball needs to be a different number. In fact, the Powerball can be the same as one of the first five numbers because it is drawn from a separate tumbler,” Northrop said.
Andrew Perry, a mathematics professor at Springfield College in Massachusetts also spoke to Newsweek about the Powerball and said, “If the Powerball lottery is truly random as it purports to be, then the probability of hitting the jackpot with each ticket is exactly 1 in 292,201,338. Conceivably it’s not as random as the lottery would have us believe and there is some kind of flaw in the way they draw the balls, but I believe that it’s in fact truly random. The only way to increase your odds of winning is to buy more tickets.”
“If you buy 100 tickets, for example, then your odds are about one in 3 million instead of 1 in 300 million,” Perry told Newsweek. “Joining a lottery syndicate (in other words, teaming up with other people) is a reasonable plan to increase your odds of sharing in a jackpot. However you play, there’s a high probability of losing all your money. I would advise people not to risk money that they can’t afford to lose.”
Powerball tickets are sold in 45 states across the U.S. as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The next Powerball drawing will take place at 10:59 p.m. ET on Saturday, November 5, with ticket sales being cut off around one to two hours before the drawing, according to the Powerball website.
