Do you have what it takes to predict the lottery numbers and win the US Powerball jackpot?
The US Powerball, America's biggest lottery is having a massive draw tonight and many are digging out their lucky charms, checking their horoscopes and preparing other methods to predict the six winning numbers (five main numbers and the one Powerball number).
None of that works, of course, but they do promote a little confidence before the winning numbers are drawn. There is an equal chance of every number being chosen, yet many players believe some numbers are luckier or hotter than others. So, what numbers are officially the most popular?
The US Powerball has kept records of all the winning numbers over the years and its findings show that the number 20 has been drawn the most over the past fourteen years. The second most popular number is 26. Completing this list of fortunate numbers are 42, 32 and 16. It may also be in your favour to travel to Pennsylvania, as it's the "luckiest" US Powerball state in the USA, with 16 jackpot winning tickets being drawn there.
Sadly, a change in the amount of available numbers to pick from has been increased, raising the odds from 1 in 175 million to 1 in 292 million, and these odds apply to both manually selecting your numbers or using the quick pick option for your number selections. The number of white and red (the PowerBall) numbers was increased as a means of increasing secondary prizes (1 in 25, whereas it used to 1 in 35), but this put the grand jackpot even further out of reach. There are now 69 white and 26 red (previously, it was 59 white and 35 red) numbered balls to select.
While tonight's US Powerball lottery draw isn't the biggest of all time - that amount was $590 million in 2013 - it's still $400 million and that's well worth buying a lottery ticket for. Ultimately, every number has an equal chance of being drawn and oddly enough, if you dream of pigs the night before, you might see some winnings in your future, as pigs represent good fortune, according to Chinese lore.
