No one hit the grand prize in Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing, and the jackpot swelled to an estimated $1 billion heading into Saturday’s drawing.
The night’s numbers and winners
The drawing produced these numbers: 10, 16, 29, 33, 69 with Powerball 22 (Power Play: 3). While the grand prize went unclaimed, three tickets matched five white balls and won $1 million each; those tickets were sold in Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey. Smaller prizes — from a few dollars up to six figures — were also paid out across the country.
Powerball tickets cost $2 per play and are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Five states — Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah — do not offer the game.
What the $1 billion figure actually means
The advertised jackpot represents the estimated total of annual annuity payments paid over decades. Powerball lists an estimated cash value for this prize at about $461.3 million — the lump-sum amount a winner could choose instead of the annuity. Winners also face federal taxes and possible state taxes, which reduce the take-home sum.
Odds of winning the jackpot remain steep: about 1 in 292.2 million. Wednesday’s draw marked another in a long streak of no grand-prize winners since the massive $1.787 billion prize that was split in September by tickets sold in Texas and Missouri.
Drawings occur every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET, so the next chance at the billion-dollar prize is Saturday night.
If you play, keep basic ticket hygiene in mind: sign the back of a paper ticket, store it safely, and check deadlines for claiming prizes in the state where you bought the ticket. And whether you fantasize about a sudden windfall or play for fun, treat lottery tickets as entertainment — not an investment strategy.
For curious readers: the record book of U.S. jackpots is crowded in recent years, with multiple prizes topping nine figures and a few pushing past a billion. That growth is why these drawings still grab headlines — a single slip of paper can change lives, for better or worse.