The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot after the July 19 drawing for the $1.08 billion pot.

Powerball’s massive jackpot will rollover and increase after Saturday’s drawing produced no winning tickets, according to the game’s website.

The $1.4-billion jackpot now grows to $1.55 billion but remains the third-largest in Powerball’s history (the second largest was $1.586 billion in 2016).

The last time someone won the Powerball jackpot after the July 19 drawing for the $1.08 billion pot. The winning ticket then was sold in California.

      • kick_out_the_jams@kbin.social
        85·
        1 year ago

        Except he mentioned the chance part.

        It’s called a lottery, I think it’s generally understood that not everybody wins.

    • bss03@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Expected return calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_return there are likely better “bets” you can make. On top of that, even if the expected return is good, you have to take into account the Kelly Criterion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion which limits how much of your bankroll you want to spend on a longshot, and if that’s less than the cost of a single ticket, buying tickets is more likely to bankrupt you than for you to win.

      https://quantwolf.com/doc/powerball/powerball.html

    • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
      35·
      1 year ago

      After taxes you’d still come out less than a billionaire. But if a measley rich as fuck is good enough… He’ll I’ll probably kick a couple of bucks into the pot for the next drawing.

      • PlatinumSf@pawb.socialEnglish
        31·
        1 year ago

        They’re referring to how the lottery is a tax on poor people. The states/etc use large portions of funding from it to do good things, but it shouldn’t be a revenue stream for states because a majority of participants live at or below the US poverty line.

        • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
          41·
          1 year ago

          It is not a tax. Taxes are not voluntary.If you are old enough to buy a ticket you are old enough to judge the risk of buying in. That responsibility lies solely on the participant. And right or wrong it’s the biggest blessing schools in the South have ever seen. You can be mad, but don’t buy a ticket if you are.

          • PlatinumSf@pawb.socialEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I’m not mad, but you’re judging something that factually has potential to be addictive depending on the person, and that has been shown to be abusive to those in poverty (because again, that’s the main participants, people underprivileged day dreaming for a way out) as good just because it funds education and some otherwise very good things. We can run a lottery without incentivizing the funding to come from the underprivileged, and fund education, and should expect our government to do both.

      • ShunkW@lemmy.world
        153·
        1 year ago

        I mean, if someone spends $2 once in a while for the fun and daydreaming, it’s not really an idiot tax. I’ll probably buy a single ticket.

        • SilentStorms@lemmy.ca
          5·
          1 year ago

          For real. I buy a ticket occasionally just because it’s fun to think about what I’d do with the money for the few days before the draw. Worth the $2 in entertainment value. I’ll occasionally win $10 or something, which is a bonus. I fail to see the issue with people spending an inconsequential amount of money for funsies.

          It’s the people who spend hundreds on lottery tickets that are the problem. Even then, people with gambling problems aren’t idiots, they’re desperate people who are being taken advantage of by the gaming industry.