Changes to the Powerball Lottery
Wednesday January 18th 2012The Powerball organisers, the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL) announced last year that it was going to make some adjustments to its game and many rumors circulated as to what these would be. However, now (as of the 15th January 2012) changes have been made to the Powerball game, and will play out for the first time in tonight’s draw. The jackpot available to win in this first draw of the week and first with the changes is estimated at $80 million, but what exactly are these adjustments that have been made to the Powerball?
Well, to start off with the starting jackpot in the Powerball has increased from being at $20 million, to now being $40 million. This is a hope from the organisers that Powerball jackpots will now regularly surpass the $100 million mark, meaning players get to win larger sums of money. In addition to that the number of red balls (the Powerball) available to select has decreased from being 1 – 39 to 1 – 35 and this means that the odds for winning the jackpot has improved to 1 in 175,223,510.
The Power Play feature that this multi-state lottery has is another thing that has also changed. The Power Play enables players to increase their original winnings, and now the Power Play prizes are all fixed amounts. Although to play this special feature comes at an additional cost it allows players the chance to win double or sometimes triple there original Powerball win (excluding the jackpot).To add to this the smallest prize available in this American multi-state lottery has gone from $3 to $4 and this is won by matching the Powerball only.
All of these changes have been made to celebrate the fact that the Powerball is 20 years old this year. Whether people like the new Powerball or not remains to be seen, however players who aren’t too keen on these changes can play the Mega Millions, which is the other American multi-state lottery that is also run by the MUSL.