Powerball says its odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24.9, while the odds of winning a jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. Massachusetts residents imagine how they would spend their money if they won Powerball's $1 billion jackpot. 'When it hits the $600 million mark is when you start seeing it exponentially grow.' 'It's always on an incline, but you start to see it raising even more when you hit about the half a billion dollar mark,' Bracken said. You don't want it to go too long without hitting.'īracken said the state sees gradually increasing interest as the jackpot rises. 'So you want to get to the higher jackpot. 'To some degree, was probably intentional because, again, people love winning big chunks of money,' Bracken said. Bracken said the changes in odds and prizes were likely introduced to spark even more interest amongst players. Powerball made changes to its matrix in 2015, and Mega Millions made changes to its matrix in 2017.

Mega Millions and Powerball, which are played in almost every state across the country, are similar lottery games and both began in the 1990s. Matrix is a lottery term that is used to describe the configuration used to determine how many numbers are needed for certain payouts. 'That kind of expanded the odds of hitting, so the odds got harder to hit the jackpot, but it greatly improved the odds of people winning lower tier prizes.' '(There were) some matrix changes five and six years ago for both Powerball and Mega Millions,' Bracken explained.

We asked the interim executive director of the Massachusetts State Lottery, Mark William Bracken, why that may be.

Since the first jackpot hit $1 billion back in 2016, it's happened several more times, including in the latest game.

Here are some things that are more likely to happen to you. Think you have a chance at winning the Lottery? Well, you do! But its a very, very small chance.

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