The New Jersey Lottery Headquarters is open to the public by appointment only. Claiming a Winning Ticket. Prizes of up to and including $599.50 may be claimed at any New Jersey Lottery retailer. Prize claims can be delivered using the drop box from the Lottery Headquarters, Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. DV-2019 Entrants have until September 30, 2019 to check the status of their entry through this website. The DV-2019 registration period was from October 18, 2017, until November 22, 2017.

• Lotto Statistics Analysis
• Lotto Analysis Best Numbers

One of the most prominent lotteries in the USA, the US Powerball holds the record for producing the biggest jackpot at a $1.5 Billion mark. The matrix change that occurred on October 7, 2015 – using a 5/69 (white balls) + 1/26 (Powerballs) –resulted to odds increasing from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million.

First officially launched in 1992, the US Powerball is the first ever lottery game to use two pools of numbers. Powerball jackpots start at $40 million and can potentially reach hundreds of millions in just a few months.

Lotto Statistics Analysis

How To Play The US Powerball

After the changes made on October 2015, the American Powerball’s matrix went from picking 5 balls in a pool of 59 to 69 and picking 1 Powerball in a pool of 35 to 26.

There are various prize divisions under the US Powerball, but in order to win the jackpot, a player must match all 6 drawn numbers, including the Powerball.

Understanding The Odds Of US Powerball

The US Powerball’s 5/69 game format totals to 11,238,513 combinations. However, winning the jackpot requires you to match the extra Power Ball by choosing a number between 1 and 26, in which the 6-number combination then produces a total of 292,201,338 combinations.

Don’t be thrown by the seemingly astronomical odds. After all, Lottometrix is here to help you apply the best mathematical strategy in your game in order to help you win the jackpot.

U.S. Powerball Lottery Patterns

In the US Powerball, there are a total of 462 patterns.

Out of the 462 patterns, we calculated a total combination of 11,238,513 numbers.

Out of 462 patterns, our calculation shows the following:

• 6 best patterns that we highly recommend people should play all the time
• 155 patterns that we recommend people should play moderately
• 301 patterns that people should avoid at all times

Lotto Analysis Best Numbers

You can view the complete patterns, when you register as a Lottometrix member. It’s free to signup.

How To Win The US Powerball

Simply playing the lottery is indubitably different from playing to win one. The American Powerball is no exception. Several possible scenarios can trigger a player to win a lottery, but several variables contribute to this event – including luck and a simple strategy. However, to win big playing in the manner of simply choosing your number randomly or relying on old-fashioned strategies is not in any way effective.

You can beat the odds of the US Powerball by playing with patterns that give you the best probability of winning.

We have divided the patterns into 19 Groups.

The table below shows you the group of patterns for US Powerball and from this table, you will find an interesting trend that will give you a good idea on how to play.

• BLUE: Most appearing
• GREEN: Play
• BLACK: Play moderately
• RED: Never play

Worst patterns – never play these groups

As you can see, there are patterns that will give you an advantage and patterns that will put your money down the drain. For example if you limit your number selection to patterns in group 11 to 19, there’s a good chance you will not win the jackpot even if you play for 1000 draws without skipping.

In order to have a definite chance of winning the US Powerball, you should choose a pattern that will give you the best advantage of winning.

Below are screenshots from the exclusive area of Lottometrix. Remember you can see the full list of these patterns for free as a member of Lottometrix. Membership is free.

To Help You Win US Powerball, Lottometrix Shows Exactly What Patterns Are Appearing Most Frequently

Upon mathematically analyzing the American Powerball, a total 462 patterns were found available to play with at any given time. However, out of these 462 patterns, only 6 patterns can be said to impose an accurately impressive outcome. Simply put, out of the 462 patterns, there are only 6 highly recommended patterns to play with and you can view them when you log in.

US Powerball Has Bad Number Patterns That People Are Not Aware Of. Lottometrix Has A Complete List Of Them.

As for patterns that have a slight chance of appearing in a draw, after mathematically and statistically analyzing the lottery, there are precisely 155 moderately recommended patterns out of the 462 US Powerball patterns.

Like Any Other Lotteries, There Are Lots Of Worst Patterns in US Powerball Too.

Out of the 462 patterns, simply deduct the 6 highly recommended patterns, the 155 moderately recommended patterns, and you’ll end up with 301 of the worst patterns. Log in to Lottometrix to view them.

You Can Win The In The Shortest Time Possible

Once you’re logged into the Lottometrix exclusive members’ area, you will see the best patterns to play within the American Powerball.

Register now and get instant access to winning patterns. It’s completely FREE.

“Jackpot is yours to take, because YOU will WIN”

University of Minnesota, Twin CitiesSchool of StatisticsCharlie Geyer Home PageJohn Corbett Home Page

Updated Feb 16, 2006.

Abstract

The number of winners in a lottery has an approximate Poisson distribution,and the expected number of winners is the number of tickets sold divided bythe number of ways to win (approximately 146.1 million for thePowerballLottery).As the size of thejackpot increases, so does the expected number of winners. As the expectednumber of winners increases, your expected winnings decreasebecause you have to split the jackpot with other winners.

Even for very large jackpots,the expected value of a ticketis still less than the price of the ticket.

How the Lottery Works

The specific lottery we will analyze is thePowerballLottery run by the Multi-State Lottery Association for about 30 states.The same principles apply to any lottery.

The specific analysis is for the drawing Wednesday, February 15,2006 because that was when one of us was called by a newspaper reporterand we updated this web page.

The lottery has two kinds of prizes. There are a number of small fixedprizes ranging from $3 to $200,000. Then there is the big jackpot, whichstarts at about $10 million (we are unable to find the exact number underthe current rules) and grows until somebody wins it.

About half of every dollar bet goes to prizes. The other half goes to overhead(administration and advertising) and to the state governments. Of the 50 centsof each dollar that goes to prizes,19.71 centsgoes to pay off fixed prize winners and the rest,the powerball FAQ says,thirty cents of every dollar sold, goes into thejackpot. The more people bet and the more drawings that go by with no winner,the larger the jackpot gets.

We don't have much interest in the fixed prizes. The only thing you needto know about them is that you expect to win 19.71 cents in various fixedprizes per dollar bet (on average, in the long run).

Your chance of winning the jackpot with one ticket is about 1 in 146.1 million(exactly 1 in 146,107,962).If you win, you may have to divide the jackpot with other winners. The jackpotis divided equally among the winning tickets.

To make things more confusing there are two ways you can take your jackpotwinnings. You can take your winnings immediately in one lump payment,or you can take your winnings in 30 equal annual payments spread out over29 years. The first is called the cash option, the second the annuity option.

The advertised value of the annuity option is usually almost twice the sizeof the cash option because of the interest that builds up over 29 years.The lottery buys US government bonds to cover the annual annuity payments.Thus the difference between the cash and annuity options depends on theinterest rate.

How much the annuity is actually worth is a question for an economist,not a statistician. What an economist would call the present valueof the annuity is much less than its advertised value, because if youhad that much in cash and invested it (say in US government bonds likethe lottery does so there is low risk), you would get a lot more back in equalannual payments over 29 years. On the other hand, the present value ofthe annuity is more than the cash option, because you pay less in taxeson the annuity, and the interest on the annuity is earned before taxes.To keep things simple, we will consider that the present value of thejackpot is the value of the cash option. That understates thevalue a bit, but is closer than taking the advertised value of the annuity.

An Overly Simplistic Analysis

As mentioned above, we are going to use the the drawing Wednesday, February 15,as our specific example. The day before (when this was written)the lottery estimated thejackpot would be $300 million as an annuity or $145.7 million cash.

If you could be sure that if you won you would be the only winner,the calculation of your expected winnings on a $1 ticket would be simple.The jackpot is $145.7 million, and your chance of winning is 1 / 146,107,962.Thus your expected jackpot winnings are

There is also the possibility of winning one of the fixed prizes. Aswe said above, your expected winnings for those are about 19.71 cents.Hence your total expected winnings (jackpot plus fixed prizes) are$1.19 on a $1 bet. Or at least that's what they would beif you could be sure you wouldn't have to split the jackpot with anyother winners. Since you can't be sure of that, this analysisis wrong.

A Better Analysis

How much you win depends on how many other winners you have to splitthe prize with. When the jackpot is small and the number of ticketssold is much smaller than 146.1 million, an analysis like the one abovewouldn't be far wrong, because the chance of multiple winners is negligible.When the jackpot is huge and the number of tickets sold is a sizable fractionof 146.1 million, multiple winners are likely, and we need a better analysis.

How much you win if you win depends on how many winners there are.So we need to calculate the probability distribution of the number of winners.(More pedantically, we need to calculate the conditional probabilitydistribution of the number of other winners given that youwin. Fortunately we don't need to worry about the distinction, because bothdistributions happen to be the same.)

This distribution is called the Poissondistribution. The formula for the Poisson distribution contains a parameterm which is the expected number of winning tickets, which is thenumber of tickets sold times the probability of winning (1 in 146.1 million).

Thus the first thing we have to figure out is the number of tickets sold.That's hard. Usually, you can't find this number either in the lotteryadvertising or in any of the news coverage. However, the reporter whotalked to one of us said the lottery expects to sell 80 million ticketsthis week.

Now we can calculate the expected number of winners, which is

Now using the formula for your expected jackpot winnings derived onthe Poisson distribution page

where

• W is your expected jackpot winnings,
• J is size of the jackpot,
• m is expected number of winners, and
• e is base of the natural logarithms(use the e^x key on a scientific calculator tocalculate e^{− m}).

Plugging in the numbers gives (remember that we are considering thecash value of the jackpot to be its true worth)

The last column is the product of the second and third -- amount you winin each case times the probability of that case. The sum of the last columnis the expectedvalue $112.2 million, which is the same as given by the formula.

The table is also of interest because it gives the probabilities ofmultiple winners. Recall that we said that the Poisson distribution(the probabilities in the second column) not only givesthe conditionalprobability of the number of other winners besides yourselfgiven you win it also gives the unconditional probabilityof the number of winners. Thus we see that the most probable number ofwinners was zero (59% chance), the next most probable number was one(32% chance), and the next was two (9% chance).

Now the rest of the calculation is easy. Your expected jackpot winningsare $112.2 million if you win, your chance of winning is 1 in 146.1 million,the expected value of your $1 ticket is

or 96.5 cents on the dollar(19.8 cents from fixed prizes and 76.8 cents from the jackpot).

This is not bad considering that if you take the annuity, the present valuemay be somewhat underestimated by the cash value, which would make theexpected value even higher. It is also not bad considering what you expectfor a drawing with a small jackpot. Then the cash option may be assmall as $7.3 million, with very few tickets sold (compared to 146.1 million)we can use our crude estimate of the expectation that ignores the possibilityof multiple winners

just 25 cents on the dollar(19.8 cents from fixed prizes and 5.0 cents from the jackpot).

Summary

Summing up our conclusions, it's much better to play in a week with a bigjackpot than a small one (duh!) but even in a week with a near record jackpot(second largest in history)the lottery is only almost but not quite a break even proposition.

For the record, there was no winner (the most likely outcome with 57.8 percentchance), and the jackpot was even bigger for the next drawing.

Questions or comments to:John Corbett corbett@stat.umn.eduorCharles Geyer charlie@stat.umn.edu

Back to Charlie Geyer's home page.