Powerball Jackpot Grows to $146 Million

Sunday, January 11, 2009 posted 02:24 AM EST

The Powerball Lottery was still waiting for some lucky ticket holder to hit it big, but it didn’t happen Saturday night.

With no winner in Saturday night’s drawing, the jackpot grew to $146 million, or a cash value of $85.5 million.

While no one won the jackpot Saturday, there were 940,953 players across the nation that won a total of more than $6.5 Million in prizes in America’s Game.

The winning numbers were 8-10-18-43-56, with a Powerball 9 and a Power Play 3.

The Powerball Lottery is played in Arizona, Connecticut, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Just last week, the new year brought changes to the Powerball game. Last Sunday the new Powerball became a 59/39 game. Powerball officials say they’re adding white ball numbers to make the jackpots bigger, while removing some of the red ball numbers to create more winners. The changes are expected to create more than 3.5 million additional winners per year at the same sales level.

Also on January 4, the state of Florida joined the Powerball program, making it the 30th state in the Multi-State Lottery Association. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands are also members.

In 2008, there were 11 Powerball jackpot winners. The largest prize was a $276 million jackpot won in West Virginia in March.

Other changes announced effective on Sunday, the Power Play option will continue, except that 5X will always be drawn for the second prize (Match 5+0). That means that when players win the second prize and have also purchased the Power Play option, their $200,000 prize will automatically become $1 million; every time. And this prize is paid in cash. The Power Play option will still offer the chance of drawing the multipliers 2X, 3X, 4X, or 5X for the other set prize levels, but the second prize will never be less than 5X.

Powerball officials say they know that most folks only play for the big jackpot, but they want to create many more millionaires in the game, and they remind players not to forget to check tickets for the other prize levels. The starting jackpot will also be bumped from a guaranteed $15 million to a guaranteed $20 million.

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