Powerball lottery jackpot climbs to $1.2 billion

The seventh-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history, $1.2 billion, will be on the line in Wednesday evening’s Powerball drawing after no tickets with all six numbers were sold for the 30th consecutive drawing.

There hasn’t been a drawing with a grand prize winner since July 19 when a ticket worth $1.08 billion was sold at a downtown Los Angeles mini-market, the seventh-largest jackpot in U.S. history.

Ticket sales end at 7 p.m., and the drawing will be at 7:59 p.m.

The odds of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is 1 in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association which conducts the game. The overall chance of winning a prize is 1 in 24.9.

Buying tickets at a store where tickets with large jackpots have been sold in the past will not increase a purchaser’s chance of winning a jackpot, according to USC mathematics professor Ken Alexander.

“The chance that a given place will sell a winning lottery ticket is just related to how many tickets they sell,” Alexander told City News Service.

However, players wanting a better chance of avoiding sharing the jackpot should choose numbers that aren’t selected as often, Alexander said. Lottery players frequently choose the date of their birthdays as one of their numbers, so numbers higher than 31 would be played less, Alexander said.

Wednesday’s jackpot is the third-largest in the history of the Powerball game, which began in 1992. There have been four Mega Millions drawings with larger jackpots.

The Powerball game is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.

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