$42m is up for grabs: So what are your odds of winning Lotto Powerball?

Tuesday, 25 February 2020

One lucky person could soon be $42 million richer.

The second largest Lotto Powerball jackpot in history could be won this Wednesday.

The only jackpot was over $40m was in 2016, when it rocketed up to $44m and was won by a young family from the Hibiscus Coast.

There are stories of Lotto winners yelling for joy, feeling shell-shocked, and racing to tell their partners the news after realising they had become multimillionaires overnight.

**READ MORE:

The Lotto Powerball jackpot has reached $42 million.

* The true cost of having a decent shot at Lotto is high

* Lotto's 2019 winners reveal their secrets to success

* The Kiwis with the golden tickets: NZ's biggest ever Lotto Powerball wins

People are apparently more likely to be struck by lightning than win a huge Lotto jackpot.

* Two Aucklanders just won $19.1m with Lotto. This is the story of what happens next**

But what are the chances of someone actually taking out the $42m jackpot this Wednesday? We crunch the numbers.

One website says the odds of winning with a $15 Power Dip ticket was about the same as choosing the right star in the night sky across 843 nights.

Believe it or not, it is more likely for someone to be struck by lightning or bitten by a shark, than win big in Lotto.

Stuff has previously pointed out that you have a better chance of giving birth to identical quadruplets (if you are pregnant), flipping a coin on heads 28 times in a row, drowning in your bath, being killed by a vending machine or being related to the Queen, than scooping a Powerball jackpot.

If every sheep in New Zealand bought a minimum Lotto ticket, about three of them would win.

University of Auckland professor of biostatistics Thomas Lumley said the chance of getting the winning numbers - all six Lotto numbers plus the Powerball - was 1 in 38 million per line.

However, every line you play increases your chances, so the odds go back to about one in 3.8m for a $15 Power Dip with 10 lines of Lotto Powerball.

A South Island Lotto shop has sold the highest amount of first division winning tickets in Southland, ahead of Wednesday night's $42m draw.

According to New Zealand gambling information website Choice Not Chance, the odds of winning with a $15 Power Dip ticket was about the same as choosing the right star in the night sky from all the visible stars across 843 nights.

In a statement to Stuff, Lumley said that for a 16-line ticket you have a 16 in 38 million chance (a bit less than 1 in two million).

One in ten million is about your chance of predicting all 40 winners in the first six rounds of Super Rugby (if you're pretty good at rugby tipping). Half of this chance is one in five million, which is the same number of Jacinda Arderns you'll find in New Zealand, Lumley said.

'If every sheep in New Zealand bought a minimum ticket you'd expect three of them to win,' he said.

He said that if you played Lotto every week, with a 16-line ticket each week, and so did 500 of your friends, you'd average not much more than a century between each time one of you won Powerball.

According to Lumley, buying every number would cost about $57m ($1.50x38m). 'So even a jackpot this big isn't enough to make it a fair bet - and that's before you consider that you might have to share the prize with other people.'

'But as long as you understand it isn't a fair bet, and that you don't have any way to improve your chance of getting the right numbers, it might be good value entertainment,' he said.

A Power Dip ticket has a minimum of eight lines and eight Powerball lines and costs $12. A ticket with 16 lines of each will set you back $24.

If you have minimal skin in the game – an eight-line ticket at $12 – the chances of winning improve to one in 4.8 million.

If New Zealand's population was a haystack, that's about the chance of finding a single needle – or person – by just walking around the country.

Of course the more tickets you buy, the more lines you have, and the more skin you have in the game.

Buying the most expensive Powerball ticket, called a triple dip, at 18 lines of both Lotto and Power Ball for $28, your odds significantly improve, sort of.

You'll have a one in 2.13 million chance at taking the $42m – about the same chance you have of netting this rare blue crayfish. Or drowning at the beach, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History.

According to the Independent, people in the UK are more likely to win an Oscar, become a successful Olympian, or be hit by part of a plane falling from the sky than secure a life-changing jackpot.

Audio provided courtesy of RNZ