Lottery fever is growing nationwide as the Powerball jackpot is now at an estimated $1.3 billion.
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The winning numbers on Saturday night were 16, 19, 32, 34, and 57, and the Powerball was 13.
No ticket matched all six numbers during the Saturday night drawing.
Roughly 95 percent of Powerball tickets are computer-generated quick picks, so people’s favorite numbers aren’t really a factor.
On Wednesday, when the Powerball jackpot hit $600 million, the store sold about $10,000 worth of tickets, shift supervisor Karissa Elliott said.
Sales for Saturday night’s drawing, in which $949.8 million was at stake, had been robust in the participating 44 states, as well as the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
As word of the cartoonishly large prize spread, crowds formed early at outlets listed on the California Lottery’s website as “lucky retailers” – for having sold more high-winning tickets than other stores.
“It’s just surprising that so many people bought tickets and nobody won”, said a Powerball player, Debbie Moran.
Individual lotteries keep the profits and use them for projects approved by local legislatures, usually to include some money going to education. Between Powerball drawings Wednesday and Saturday, California sold $109.3 million in tickets, Lopez said.
Another winning ticket was divided among a group of friends in Maryland that dubbed themselves the “Three Amigos”.
The new Powerball jackpot for Wednesday is now twice as large as the largest lottery jackpot in US history. “Absolutely confirmed”, Texas Lottery executive director Gary Grief said.
Camelot said it expected to have sold at least 400 tickets per second, online and by retailers, in the final hours before sales stopped at 7.30pm on Saturday. A Florida woman won the largest Powerball jackpot of $590.5 million on May 18, 2013.
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In this photo made with a fisheye lens a clerk hands a patron his $10 worth of chances for the upcoming Powerball drawing on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2016, in Cranberry Township, Pa. The Powerball jackpot has reached a record $900 m…
