The Powerball multi-jurisdictional lottery saw rules changes take place on Jan. 15, 2012, promising higher average jackpots, and as the jackpot has not been won since then, players now see the fruits of that change: the lottery will reach $250 million in value on Wednesday, Feb. 8, as there were no winners in the Friday, Feb. 4, 2012 drawing.
On Wednesday, the estimated jackpot will be $250 million for the top prize on an annuity basis. The cash payout is estimated to be $156 million. Although there were no big jackpot winners on Saturday, Feb. 4, you can find a table of winners associated with the winning numbers, which were 15-23-43-45-56 with a Powerball of 7, below.
The annuity value for a jackpot differs from the cash value because of the way the annuity value is determined. The difference reflects the fact that interest from any unpaid funds is used to generate the extra monetary value for the annuity. For example, the $44 million drawing scheduled for Sat. Jan 7, 2012 had a cash value of $27.9 million. However, at times the interest rate is changed, meaning that the annuity payout for any specific cash value jackpot may differ from Powerball jackpot to Powerball jackpot.
The Jan. 15, 2012 changes involved increasing the entry amount, and decreasing the odds, while at the same time modifying the way Power Play works, so that players have a consistent expectation of what the Power Play multiplier would be. The entry fee has increased from $1 to $2. However, the odds were lowered slightly, by reducing the overall number of Powerball numbers that a player must select from to 35, down from 39. That change reduced the odds from one out of 195 million to one out of 175 million. However, with the increased lottery entry fee, the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) said that the average jackpot would now be $140 million.
At the same time, the "second" place prize, just below the jackpot, was raised to $1 million, meaning the MUSL could now advertise a better chance to become a millionaire (which it did).
The Power Play feature, which is optional (for an additional $1 entry fee), used to multiply prize amounts within certain tiers by a randomly selected amount. That could mean the Power Play multiplier was as low as 2x, which was somewhat less appealing to players. The new system sets a constant multiplier for prize tiers except for the jackpot. Those multiplier values are obvious in the table below.
Here is the table of winners for the Powerball drawing for Feb. 4, 2012. PB = Powerball.
| Prize Level |
Winners | Prize | PowerPlay Winners |
PowerPlay Prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5-of-5 + PB | 0 | $200 Million | - | - |
| 5-of-5 | 0 | $1,000,000 | 1 | $2,000,000 |
| 4-of-5 + PB | 5 | $10,000 | 1 | $40,000 |
| 4-of-5 | 152 | $100 | 32 | $200 |
| 3-of-5 + PB | 292 | $100 | 57 | $200 |
| 3-of-5 | 9,172 | $7 | 1,798 | $14 |
| 2-of-5 + PB | 5,338 | $7 | 1,062 | $14 |
| 1-of-5 + PB | 35,055 | $4 | 7,182 | $12 |
| 0-of-5 + PB | 75,748 | $4 | 15,907 | $12 |
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons
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