Playing the Powerball is a Bet on the Impossible, But It's Still Kind of Possible

Let's face it. Winning the lottery is the pipe dream of pipe dreams. But I still play because as the old saying goes, you can't win if you don't play. Besides, at least when it comes to the Powerball and the MegaMillions games, a ticket only costs $2, and it only takes one to win.

Granted, you need the right one, and when it comes to the Powerball, which is going for a whopping $1.23 billion for Saturday's drawing, depending on which payout option you choose, the odds of holding the right ticket are 1 in 292,201,338.

In other words, it's nearly impossible to win. But of course, someone will.

Sure, you can try to buy multiple tickets, but it only fractionally increases your odds and is so insignificant it probably isn't worth doing. But you just never know. When jackpots are this high, I might be okay with shelling out $10 or $20 for a few extra shots at it.

Why not? Besides. It's fun to dream, right? And I suppose I have wasted $20 on worse things? Hell, there was that time I bought a drone only to take it outside, hit one button, and watch it whizz straight up into the air and into the atmosphere never to be seen again.

Besides just being gosh darn lucky to win the thing, here are some fun other things that are far more likely to happen to you other than winning the big one which may help to put the odds into a bit of perspective.

You have a 1 in 2 million chance, for example, of finding a blue lobster in the ocean. 1 in roughly 2.5 million have a chance to be attacked by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park. There's a 1 in 9 million chance you will be struck by lightning twice.

Odds are even better you might find a four leafed clover which is 1 in 10,000. You even have a better chance at winning an Olympic medal which is 1 in 660,000. 1 in 6.5 million have a better chance of dying from a bee sting than hitting the big jackpot. 1 in 10 million stand a chance of being struck by a piece of an airplane falling from the sky for Heaven's sake.

Even 1 in 3,800 have a shot at living to be 100 years old. 1 in 11 million are likely to be attacked by a shark. You could walk into a casino and have a 1 in 649,000 chance of sitting down at the poker table and having the very first hand dealt to you be a royal flush.

Odds are that not even one of these things will ever happen to you. But again, they are more likely to happen to you than winning the lottery.

I think the key with it is just to have fun. Let the dream fly, but not to get carried away and shelling out big bucks that won't really impact your chances of winning at all. I think we have all sat down and done some of the math just to see how much we might actually take home.

For example, most people choose the cash option, and that immediately takes a sizeable chunk of cash off the table right away since the published prize is not the actual total prize pool, but instead is the prospective value of the annuity that the prize pool would be invested in if you decided to choose to receive payments over 29 years.

The cash option in the next drawing on Apil 6th is estimated to be $595.1 million. Depending on the state where you live you could probably expect to take home about $357.06 million after taxes. It's a lot less than $1.23 billion, but nothing not to write home about and forever change your life.

Consider there is also a 1 in 584.4 million chance you may have to share you prize with someone else. And when jackpots are this high, it is more probable you will have to share it since more people tend to buy tickets.

Either way, $178.53 million after taxes is still a sizeable chunk of dough.

Ultimately, if I had one strong piece of advice for you on what to do, I'd say not to bother getting your own ticket. After all, I already have the winning ticket. I am pretty sure of that. I wonder what the odds are of finding a four leafed clover in a paved parking lot?

Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on Facebook or on X to keep up with the latest writings wherever I may write them. Looking for a place to find the $2 you need to buy a lottery ticket, have a look at the Discover card, the card that pays you back 1% to 5% on your purchases.

20 Year Old Mega Millions Winner

WHEN I READ ABOUT SHANE MISSLER, THE FLORIDA MAN WHO WON THE MOST REECENT MEGA MILLIONS JACKPOT, THE THING THAT STRUCK ME WAS HOW OLD HE IS.

He's just 20 years old! He chose to take the lump sum which amounted to about $282 million. 

But there you have it. You just never know who is going to win or where, and it matters little how long they have been playing, and in the case of many lottery winners, whether they play at all until they hit the big one.

How many times have you heard a winner say, "I never played before, but something told me to buy a ticket this time."

UGH. I HAVE BEEN PLAYING FOR YEARS AND HALF THE TIME I AM LUCKY IF I EVEN GET MY WAGER BACK!

Still, and I know it's as cliché as clichés come, somebody has to win. As I am a realist by nature, just based on the odds, I am practical in my thinking that perhaps no matter how often I play, or where I buy my tickets—I will probably never see a jackpot.

It's funny little mind games you play sometimes too. For example, I travel into several other states for my job. And so I can buy tickets in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Kansas quite often. Sometimes I think to myself, "Wow, this kind of increases my odds." In fact, about a year ago or so I had to travel to Fort Wayne, Indiana on business, and the jackpot of whichever multi-state lottery was kind of up there, and one of the town I passed through and did buy a ticket wound up being where the thing was won...

ONE WEEK AFTER I HAD BEEN THERE.

Granted, the store where the ticket was bought was also a different store, so while it was close, in reality it really wasn't. But in my mind? There was the chance.

I am happy for Shane Missler. From what he has said he is doing to manage the money, and what he wants to do with the money, maybe he will come out as one of the ones who didn't squander it all away in short time. That is always the tragedy of big lottery wins—sometimes the winners lose it all.

Either way, both the PowerBall and the Mega Millions have essentially reset. I will still play. I can't help myself. And hopefully one day I can be posting about my own big win. Only time will tell. 

You Can Win The Powerball Jackpot

Sometimes the fun of life is simply taking a moment to dream about what is possible. Like winning the Powerball jackpot which tonight could make some lucky individual $317 million richer. Granted, the odds are terrible. I will readily admit that, and anyone with half a bit of sense is quite aware of this fact as well. In fact I once sat down and compared the odds of either winning the Powerball jackpot or being struck by lightning. It turns out I am more likely to be struck 43 times in my lifetime by a bolt of lightning than win the Powerball jackpot once.

But the truth is, you can win the Powerball jackpot only if you have a ticket in your hand when the drawing occurs.

But it's such a waste of money, you say. I get that. And the Powerball, unlike most other lottery games, is twice the cost at $2 per play. Still, when I think of all of the money I waste (and I really don't waste that much money. I am quite frugal actually), a mere $2 for a chance at $317 million, or even a mediocre return is still a great opportunity to have, and I think it's $2 wasted that is worth the chance.

Somebody must win. It's the name of the game.

And people do in fact win. It was reported by the makers of the popular docuseries which chronicles the lives of those who have won the lottery that roughly 1,600 new millionaires are created every single year simply by winning the lottery. That's about 4 new millionaires each and every day of the year.

You probably won't win. The odds are simply stacked too much against the player. But again, somebody must win, and that person absolutely cannot be you unless you have a ticket in your hand when the drawing occurs.

I will certainly be buying a ticket for tonight's drawing. All I have to lose is the jackpot, right? Or, of course my $2. But just to have a chance? Just to have a long shot? Yep. I'll take my chances. If I were to win the Powerball jackpot, I would choose the annuity. The cash option is only worth about half the total prize amount, and then when you take out for taxes, it's about half of that. If I take the annuity I still get paid somewhere around (after taxes) $6,340,000 a year for 30 years.

I think that be just enough to cover the groceries to be sure.

Also by Springboard about the lottery: Winning the Lottery: The Dream of the Big Win

MegaMillions At $172 Million

The lottery is one of those things that people either love, or hate, or perhaps even love to hate. The fact is that the odds are terribly stacked against the average player. Still, I have to look at a couple of things whenever I consider whether or not it is worth forking over a buck or two and playing. One big one for me is the fact that somebody has to win. And in many ways, despite the terrible odds against me, it causes me to consider that playing is indeed worth my money, and worth my time.

Of course, like anything having to do with gambling, or even socking money into a speculative stock market investment, the risk can only be taken if it happens to be money you can afford to lose. If it's down to putting gas in the tank, or food on the table versus buying a lottery ticket, of course you choose the former over the latter.

Another fact I consider are statistics that were compiled by TLC's docuseries How The Lottery Changed My Life. It happens to be a fascinating thing to watch by the way, especially when you see certain people who wound up winning a fortune, only to wind up broke due to a variety of factors, but mostly due to poor money management.

That goes in hand with something I have always believed, and that is that the rich get richer because they know how to be rich, and the poor get poorer because they don't know how to get rich. That is sometimes thought to be a bit of a controversial statement. But think of all of the rich who lost it all on a bad business deal, only to make millions on a good one? Or how about all of the musicians and sports players who made fortunes, only to wind up broke in the end? If you don't know what you are doing when it comes to money, any amount of money will not make a bit of difference in the end.

What did TLC find? The fact is that the lottery, for all its naysayers, creates roughly 1,600 new millionaires every single year. Breaking the math down a bit further that is roughly 4 new millionaires created every single day of the year.

Granted, billions of tickets are sold each year, and so while that does make 1,600 millionaires seem like a pittance compared, that's still a lot of people coming into new money just because they forked over a dollar or two to play the lottery.

The MegaMillions next drawing is worth $172 million. Even the Powerball is worth $110 million in tonight's drawing. You can bet I'll be playing. And of course, I don't expect to win. But since somebody must win, if there is any chance that that someone could be me, I have to have a ticket in my hand to be a possible winner. As the old saying goes, you cannot win if you do not play. And after all, what's a buck?