THE new Powerball jackpot is the highest it’s ever been at US$1.3 billion after no one won Saturday night’s drawing.

    The winning numbers for the US$949.8 million Powerball jackpot were 32-16-19-57-34 and Powerball number 13.

    Saturday night’s Jackpot reached an all-time record high earlier last week.

    To win the jackpot for Wednesday’s drawing, a ticket must have all six numbers correct.

    The first five can be in any order but the sixth must be the Powerball number.

    Kelly Cripe, spokeswoman for the Texas lottery, says there’s no set amount of time to determine if there are winning tickets.

    Dreaming of overnight riches, millions of Americans anxiously checked their tickets for the winning combination in the multi-state Powerball lottery after a Saturday night drawing for a record US$900 million jackpot.

    The grand prize for Powerball, played in 44 states, Washington, and two U.S. territories, has climbed steadily for weeks after repeated drawings produced no big winners. Last week, ticket purchases surged along with the size of the pot.

    The grand prize in Saturday’s drawing was worth US$558 million if the hypothetical winner were to choose an immediate cash payout instead of annual payments over 29 years, according to lottery officials in California, one of the participating states.

    With almost unimaginable riches at stake, many Americans who normally shun lotteries have joined the long lines of people buying tickets at retail stores across the country.

    Dony Elias, 26, an attendant at Stardust Liquor in Los Angeles, said 300 customers picked up tickets for Powerball on Saturday night at his store.

    Elias admitted to buying a ticket for himself, something he said he had never done before.

    And like many other players, he has already given some thought to what he would do with the cash.

    “I would take a trip to the moon,” he said.

    California, the nation’s most populous state, normally sees Powerball sales of US$1 million a day, but on Saturday morning sales were a head-spinning US$2.8 million an hour, said California Lottery spokesman Mike Bond.

    Excitement swirled among ticket buyers despite what some statisticians call mind-boggling odds for the Powerball game — one in 292 million.

    Jeffrey Miecznikowski, associate professor of biostatistics at the University at Buffalo, said in an email an American is roughly 25 times more likely to become the next president of the United States than to win at Powerball.

    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.

    November was the last time a jackpot winner emerged from Powerball, which is run by the Multi-State Lottery Association.

    In the previous drawing on Wednesday night, the jackpot stood at US$500 million and nobody won, setting the stage for this latest drawing.

    The previous record North American jackpot payout for any lottery game was in March 2012, when US$656 million was won in the multi-state Mega Millions draw.

    (SD-Agencies)