Powerball Jackpot Stands at $793 Million for Tonight's Drawing - the 10th Largest in the Game's History
The estimate has stopped climbing and settled: $793 million, with a $339.9 million cash option, drawn tonight at 9:59 p.m. Houston time. Saturday's Halloween drawing made three millionaires - in North Carolina, Georgia and the United Kingdom - but no jackpot winner, so the run that began in August reaches its 35th drawing on Monday night.
HOUSTON - Powerball's Monday drawing is worth an estimated $793 million, with a cash value of $339.9 million, after no ticket matched all six winning numbers in Saturday's Halloween drawing, USA TODAY reported. The drawing is set for Monday night at about 10:59 p.m. Eastern - 9:59 p.m. in Houston - and streams on Powerball's website.
Saturday's numbers were 2, 4, 18, 50 and 56, with a red Powerball of 20 and a Power Play multiplier of 3x. Nobody hit all six, but the drawing was not without winners: a ticket sold in North Carolina won $2 million, and two tickets worth $1 million each were sold in Georgia and the United Kingdom. The advertised prize had stood at $760 million for most of last week and reached $770 million by drawing time; the final Monday estimate of $793 million makes this the 10th largest Powerball jackpot ever offered and the 20th largest lottery jackpot in United States history.
The run has been building since Aug. 12, when a ticket sold in Illinois claimed an estimated $1.04 billion prize. Monday is the 35th drawing since that win. A ticket costs $2, the game is sold in 45 states - Texas among them - plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the odds of matching all five white balls and the Powerball are 1 in 292.2 million.
For Houston players, the practical facts are the deadline and the double: tickets for tonight's drawing must be bought before sales close this evening, and the week's lottery money does not end with Powerball - between tonight's drawing and Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing, about $1.28 billion is up for grabs in back-to-back nights. If nobody wins tonight, the jackpot rolls again to Wednesday.
