One More Thought About Powerball Odds …

In my last blog entry, I talked about the odds in Powerball. Another thought came to me later…   

One of the most common questions that comes our way has to do with the odds of winning Powerball’s $3 prize for matching just the Powerball. The odds of doing that are about 1 in 62. But, as you know, there are only 39 numbers in the pool for the Powerball, so people often think they’ve caught us in a mistake. But they haven’t.

In actuality, the odds of matching just the red ball have to be multiplied by the odds of also not matching any of the white balls, and that’s where you come up with odds of about 1:62 of winning the $3 prize.