The life of one lucky Australian could be changed overnight, with an eye-watering $40m Powerball up for grabs in Thursday’s draw.
The jackpot and ultimate prize for draw 1418, could see someone match some of 2023’s biggest winners so far.
And to increase your chances of winning the Lott, operator of Powerball, has released new data revealing the surprising trends around this year’s luckiest Powerball entries so far.
Of 2023’s nine big winners, four were in NSW, two in SA and one each in Queensland, Victoria and WA.
In total the winners took home more than $254m in prize money.
The biggest winner of the year so far was a Western Sydney man who took home $100m on June 22 and became the second-biggest winner in Australian lottery history.
He was followed by the second biggest wins of the year so far, which were in Victoria and WA, both collecting a $40m jackpot.
The biggest Australian lottery winner of all time was a Sydney nurse who won more than $107m in January 2019.
Of the nine Powerball division one winners in 2023, five of which were marked entries.
A marked entry is when a person selects the numbers on their ticket themselves — in previous years QuickPicks (randomly generated numbers on tickets) were the most successful.
Four of this year’s division one winning entries were PowerHit entries, a ticket which guarantees the Powerball number needed to win division one.
While the numbers drawn in Powerball are completely random and each have an equal chance of being selected, there are some that have appeared more often than others.
As of June 19, the Powerball’s main barrel, which selects seven numbers from 1-35, most commonly produced the numbers 17, 7, 9, 2 and 28.
The least frequently drawn from the main barrel were 31, 33, 34, 15 and 6.
The Powerball barrel, from which the single crucial Powerball number is drawn from 1-20, most commonly saw 3 and 19 selected.
Both 14 and 16 were the rarest to be drawn.
Tonight’s $40m Powerball, draw 1418, closes at 7.30pm AEST on July 20, 2023.