Powerball lottery jackpot at $435M; winning numbers drawn
HOUSTON -- Lottery officials estimated that the jackpot for Wednesday night's Powerball drawing reached $435 million, making it the tenth largest in Powerball history.
The winning numbers are: 52 - 10 - 61 - 28 - 13 Power Play: 2
The lucky player who matches all six numbers and takes the cash option will walk away with hundreds of millions of dollars, but it won't be easy --- the odds of winning are 1 in 292 million.
If nobody wins Wednesday night's drawing, the jackpot will continue to swell until the next drawing on Saturday night.
Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1:292,201,338. For some comparison, your chance of being struck by lightning in a year is about one in 960,000. But as lottery officials often note, you have no chance of winning if you don't buy a ticket.
You must be 18 or older to play the lottery in Illinois.
Jackpots start at $40 million and each set of numbers costs $2.
Drawings are held at 9:59 p.m. CT every Wednesday and Saturday.
Meet the lucky winners of the largest lottery jackpots in U.S. history
Winners have to pay 39.6 percent of the prize in federal income taxes, in addition to any state taxes.
THE 10 HIGHEST US LOTTERY JACKPOTS
The Powerball jackpot in America may be the largest in the world, but there are also large jackpots elsewhere. Spain's massively popular Christmas lottery, known as "El Gordo," is ranked as the world's richest, though it doles out a single jackpot among millions of prizes, instead of one large jackpot like the Powerball. El Gordo last month showered 2.2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) across the country.
As for the U.S., here's a look at the 10 previous highest jackpots and where the winners were from:
1. $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot January 13, 2016 in California, Florida and Tennessee.
2. $656.0 million, Mega Millions, March 30, 2012 (three tickets from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland)
3. $636 million, Mega Millions, Dec. 17, 2013, (two tickets, from California and Georgia)
4. $590.5 million, Powerball, May 18, 2013 (one ticket from Florida)
5. $587.5 million, Powerball, Nov. 28, 2012 (two tickets from Arizona and Missouri)
6. $564.1 million, Powerball, Feb. 11, 2015 (three tickets, from North Carolina, Puerto Rico and Texas)
7. $448.4 million, Powerball, Aug. 7, 2013, (three tickets, one from Minnesota and two from New Jersey)
8. $425.3 million, Powerball, Feb. 19, 2014 (one ticket from California)
9. $414 million, Mega Millions, March 18, 2014, (two tickets from Florida and Maryland)
10. $420.9 million, Powerball, Nov. 26, 2016, (one ticket from Tennessee)
The prize is based on an annuity, which would pay out the money over 29 years. Or you can take the lump sum cash payment at once, but you'd have to pay the tax.
Some players feel they increase their odds of winning by pooling their money with co-workers, with a promise to split the winnings. Joining with colleagues and friends can increase the fun of playing, but the odds of winning are so tiny that adding 50 or 100 chances doesn't matter much. Lottery officials recommend that if people pool their money, they put down rules in writing for splitting the prize, as it's easy for misunderstandings to crop up when hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
