Powerball’s crazy jackpots

The USA’s favourite lottery is known as the Powerball and, like most things American, it’s just about the biggest and brashest the world has to offer. In fact, one Gloria McKenzie of Zephyrhills, Florida, landed a cash prize at $370.9 million earlier this year.

And this September, for example, the jackpot up for grabs hit $400 million – which is around £250 million, give or take a few million – and if you’d won that much, then perhaps you wouldn’t be too inclined to quibble!

But it isn’t a lotto just for Americans. You can now play the Powerball and check the Powerball's results online with ease from wherever you may be (though in some countries, access may be denied). 

Just bear in mind that the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are somewhere around 1 in 175 million – so you’ve probably got more chance of being hit on the head by an asteroid – or of bumping into the Queen of England in your local supermarket or whatever. But dreaming about what you’d do with such a ridiculously large amount of cash is half the fun of playing any kind of lottery of course.

Nevertheless, not all lottery winners do what you’d think. One grandmother in the UK, for example, recently decided to keep doing her job of making doughnuts in the local supermarket, despite winning over £2 million! And she has to get up at the crack of dawn each day to even get to work; so someone really must love her job.

Just remember that playing a lottery makes no statistical sense whatsoever. Only around 50% of the money staked comes back in prizes – though the rest generally goes to good causes, with a cut also going to the taxman and in administrative fees. But the chance to dream is a fine thing.