The ninth-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history will be on the line in Monday evening’s Powerball drawing.
There were no tickets sold with all six numbers for the 28th consecutive drawing Saturday, pushing the jackpot to $785 million, the fourth-largest in the history of the game which began in 1992. There have also been five Mega Millions drawings and it is the ninth-largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history.
There have been no drawings with a ticket sold with all six numbers since July 19 when a ticket with all six numbers worth $1.08 billion was sold at a downtown Los Angeles mini-market.
Ticket sales will end at 7 p.m. 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. 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.
The Powerball game is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands.