Peninsula Daily News and The Associated Press
A single ticket sold in New Jersey matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s drawing for a $338.3 million Powerball jackpot, lottery officials said today.
The numbers drawn were 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31.
The New Jersey Lottery said that details about the winning $2 ticket would be released Monday, declining today to reveal where it had been purchased and whether anyone had immediately come forward.
Powerball, which has drawings Saturday and Wednesday, is played in Washington state and 42 other states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The jackpot rolls back to $40 million for this Wednesday’s game.
Saturday night’s $338.3 million prize was the sixth largest jackpot in history.
It was the 13th drawing held in the days since a Virginia man won a $217 million jackpot Feb. 6.
If the winner chooses to take a lump sum payout instead of the $338.3 million over a 29-year annuity, the payout would be $221 million.
Thirteen other tickets worth $1 million each matched all but the final Powerball number Saturday night. Those tickets were sold in New Jersey and 10 other states. Lottery officials said there was also one Power Play Match 5 winner in Iowa.
Lottery officials said the 13 tickets worth $1 million apiece — matching the first five numbers but missing the Powerball — were sold in Arizona, Florida (2), Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania (2), South Carolina and Virginia.
No one had won the Powerball jackpot since early February, when Dave Honeywell in Virginia bought the winning ticket and elected a cash lump sum for his $217 million jackpot.
The largest Powerball jackpot ever came in at $587.5 million in November. The winning numbers were picked on two different tickets — one by a couple in Missouri and the other by an Arizona man — and the jackpot was split.
Nebraska still holds the record for the largest Powerball jackpot won on a single ticket — $365 million. That jackpot was won by eight workers at a Lincoln, Neb., meatpacking plant in February 2006.
The chance of matching all five numbers and the Powerball number is about 1 in 175 million.
Powerball said on its website that the game is played every Wednesday and Saturday at 7:59 p.m. Pacific time when five white balls are drawn from a drum of 59 balls and one red ball is picked from a drum with 35 red balls.
