No ticket holder had the winning numbers for the record $900 million U.S. Powerball jackpot drawn on Saturday night, which means Wednesday's draw will balloon to an estimated $1.3 billion.
According to the official Powerball site, the $1.3 billion jackpot would be worth $806 million if a single winner chose to take the windfall as a cash lump sum rather than over time as annuity payments. Saturday's draw would have been worth $558 million in cash.
It will be the first U.S. lottery jackpot to reach $1 billion, Reuters reported.
Saturday night's winning numbers were: 32, 16, 19, 57 and 34. The Powerball number was 13, with a multiplier of 3.
The prospect of a $900 million win had drawn long queues for tickets across the country. But the odds of matching all the numbers is 1 in 292.2 million.
Jeffrey Miecznikowski, an associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Buffalo said in an interview with Reuters that this meant an American was roughly 25 times more likely to become the country's next president that win a Powerball haul.
Or to put it another way, the odds are equivalent to flipping a coin 28 times and getting heads every time, he said.
"It doesn't sound so bad ... but you would be at it for an eternity," Miecznikowski said.
Powerball jackpots start at $40 million and grow until the big prize is won. The current jackpot has been on since Nov. 7, after 18 drawings without a big winner.
The previous U.S. record jackpot was $656 million in a Mega Millions drawing in March 2012. The largest Powerball prize was a $590.5 million jackpot won by a Florida woman in May 2013. Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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