(NEXSTAR) – The Powerball jackpot has again grown, reaching well over $800 million ahead of the next drawing. That means millions of tickets could be sold, all to players hoping to match the correct numbers to take home the third-largest prize in game history.
You may be among those players, ready to put your lucky numbers to the test. Do they stand a chance, though?
While every player, and every set of numbers, has an equal chance of winning the Powerball jackpot, there are some numbers that are drawn more frequently than others.
The five numbers that have been drawn the most during the game’s 31-year history are 32, 39, 36, 23, and 16, according to the Powerball statistics tracking website Powerball.net. Among the red Powerball numbers, these five have been drawn most frequently: 18, 24, 6, 11, and 20.
Since 2015, when Powerball added more numbers to the main and Powerball pools, the five most frequently drawn numbers have changed slightly. For the main numbers, 61, 32, 21, 36, and 23 have been the most common. For the Powerball numbers, it has been 18, 24, 4, 14, and 11.
In the current Powerball jackpot series — meaning since the last jackpot was won in mid-April — the most frequently drawn numbers look much different than those above: 2, 21, 68, 38, and 15, according to drawing records. The most drawn Powerball numbers have been 4, 23, 3, 25, and 14.
While there have been 36 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner, some numbers haven’t been drawn at all. That includes 8, 13, 14, 22, 27, and 40 from the main pool, and 9, 10, 15, 16, 21, and 22 for the red Powerball. These numbers are considered “overdue,” according to Powerball.net.
Does this mean you should pick the hottest numbers, or maybe all of the overdue numbers?
It’s up to you, but any and every combination of numbers has the same chance of winning, Rong Chen, professor and chair of the Department of Statistics in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick explains. That means the numbers drawn on Wednesday have an equal chance of being drawn again on Saturday.
Picking numbers others may be less likely to pick can, however, cut your chances of having to split the lottery prize with other winners. Chen suggests numbers larger than 31 (this avoids dates like birthdays) and avoiding numbers along the edges or corners of the ticket form.
You could also buy more tickets. But, for example, buying 100 tickets would only cut your odds from 1 in 292.2 million to about 1 in 2.92 million.
The next drawing is scheduled for Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET. Powerball is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 each.
