Mass Lottery Powerball


Mass Powerball Lottery

Introducing the newest lottery game to join the Mass Lottery. Powerball is an American lottery game sold through U.S. lotteries as a shared jackpot pool game. It is coordinated by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), a non-profit association formed by an agreement with member lotteries. Powerball drawings are held every Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern time. The drawings are regularly held at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida.

On October 13th, 2009 the MUSL and Mega Millions consortinum signed an agreement to allow member states to be allowed to join the other game and no longer require exclusivity. On January 31st, 2010, 10 Mega Million participating states started selling Powerball tickets for their first drawing on February 3rd, 2010. 23 Powerball participating states started selling Mega Millions for their first drawing on February 2nd, 2010.

Currently Powerball costs $1 per ticket. For each ticket they purchase, players must select five numbers from a set of 59 (white balls) and one number from a set of 39 (The PowerBall). Players can select their numbers on their own, or, they can elect to have the lottery computer randomly select one or more of their numbers (called "quick pick", "easy pick", etc. depending on the Powerball jurisdiction). For each drawing, the winning numbers are selected in the same fashion using two ball machines; one contains white balls numbered 1 through 59, and the second is the Powerball machine containing the red balls numbered 1 through 39. Five balls are drawn from the first machine, and one from the Powerball machine; these become the official winning numbers. Tickets which match at least three white balls and/or the red Powerball are winners.

Powerball PowerPlay

For an additional $1 per ticket, the player may activate the optional PowerPlay feature, which applies a multiplier drawn by random number generator, to all prizes except the jackpot. Depending on the PowerPlay number, players may multiply non-jackpot prizes by 2x to 5x. The multiplier for the 5+0 (second prize) is guaranteed to be 5x.

Payout and Odds

Payouts (on the base $1 play) are according to the following:

MatchesPrizeProbability of winning
Zero numbers, plus Powerball    
$ 31:61.74
1 number, plus Powerball$ 41:123.48
2 numbers, plus Powerball$ 71:787.17
3 numbers, no Powerball$ 71:359.06
3 numbers, plus Powerball$ 1001:13,644.24
4 numbers, no Powerball$ 1001:19,030.12
4 numbers, plus Powerball$ 10,0001:723,144.64
All 5 numbers, no Powerball$ 200,000    
1:5,138,133.00
All 5 numbers, plus PowerballJackpot1 in 195,249,054.00

Overall probability of winning a prize is 1 in 35.11. All non-jackpot prizes are fixed amounts, although they may be reduced and paid on a parimutuel basis if the number of winners at each prize level exceeds the funds in the prize pool for that drawing.

Last Updated on Sunday, 27 March 2011 16:20