Submitted to The Dominion Post
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The estimated jackpot amount for today’s Powerball drawing is up to $700 million with a cash value of $443.3 million, making it the second largest lottery jackpot in American history.
“We are definitely excited about the large jackpot and would love to see one of our West Virginia players win the big one,” West Virginia Lottery Director Alan Larrick said. “Our state has a great history with the Powerball game, with eight jackpot winners having bought their lucky tickets here, and we would love to see number nine happen on Wednesday night.”
Wednesday’s drawing will be the 21st drawing since the Powerball jackpot was last won June 10 in California, at $447.8 million.
This is the highest advertised Powerball jackpot amount since the jackpot run that produced the world record jackpot of $1.586 billion in January 2016. That Grand Prize was split by three tickets in California, Florida and Tennessee.
Any player who matches all five numbers and the Powerball in today’s drawing will have to decide between the annuity option of an estimated $700 million (30 payments over 29 years) or a lump-sum payment of an estimated $443.3 million. If there is more than one Grand Prize-winning ticket, the jackpot will be split by the winning tickets.
“As always, we encourage players to play responsibly,” Larrick said. “Pools are very popular with these big jackpots, and we do see more and more people playing in a group with friends and co-workers.”
There are eight other ways to win besides the jackpot. Ten tickets won $1 million or more in Saturday’s drawing, for instance. Overall odds of winning any prize are one in 24.9. Odds of winning the jackpot are one in 292,201,338.
West Virginia, despite a small population, has a reputation as being a “lucky” state when it comes to the Powerball game. West Virginia has had eight Powerball® jackpot winners and has also produced an additional 26 winners of prizes of $1 million or more from the game. In fact, 22 of those $1 million or more wins in West Virginia have happened in just the last four years.
West Virginia Lottery proceeds help support education, seniors and tourism. Since 1986, West Virginia has benefited from more than $9.5 billion in lottery proceeds.
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