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Powerball jackpot hits $1 billion for Wednesday drawing

Published 1:20 pm Tuesday, July 18, 2023

By Andrea Brown

A customer shows her purchased Powerball and Mega Millions tickets at a convenience store in Northbrook, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. The Powerball jackpot is up to $410 million. The drawing for that is Wednesday night. The Mega Millions jackpot for Friday's lottery drawing has jumped to $490 million and it potentially makes the 8th largest in the game's history. At $857 million, this is the highest combined jackpot total for the multi-state jackpot games in more than two years. Mega Millions is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
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A customer shows her purchased Powerball and Mega Millions tickets at a convenience store in Northbrook, Ill., Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. The Powerball jackpot is up to $410 million. The drawing for that is Wednesday night. The Mega Millions jackpot for Friday's lottery drawing has jumped to $490 million and it potentially makes the 8th largest in the game's history. At $857 million, this is the highest combined jackpot total for the multi-state jackpot games in more than two years. Mega Millions is played in 45 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
A customer shows her purchased Powerball and Mega Millions tickets at a convenience store. The Washington Powerball jackpot is up to $1 billion. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

EVERETT — For $2, you can be a billionaire, but don’t bet on it.

The odds of winning the Powerball $1 billion jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.

Wednesday’s drawing is for the third-largest pot in the game’s 31-year history.

The lump sum payment is around $516.8 million. For the annuity option for the full billion, the winner gets it doled out over 30 years.

There have been 38 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner. Powerball’s record jackpot was $2.04 billion in November 2022, followed by $1.586 billion in 2016.

A Washington woman won the fifth-largest jackpot of $754.6 million in February of this year. Becky Bell, of Auburn, bought the lucky ticket at a Fred Meyer grocery store.

The drawing is at 7:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

The Mega Millions jackpot for Tuesday is $640 million, the seventh-largest in the game’s history. The drawing is at 8 p.m. Pacific Time.

Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @reporterbrown.

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