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The Powerball Lottery requires a player to make 2 choices: (1) Pick 5 numbers out of a set of 59 white balls; and (2) Pick 1 Power Ball from a set of 39 balls. If the player picks the same numbers as those that are drawn in the next drawing, the player wins the Jackpot prize.
While everyone says that every combination has an equal chance of winning, Lottery Power Picks and others, believe that certain combinations are more likely to occur than others.
The following Tables summarize the occurances of the Even / Odd Distribution of all Powerball combinations.
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| The Powerball white balls are numbered 1 to 59. The player selects 5 of these numbers. The table below shows the probability of selecting even and odd balls.
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| There are 39 Power Balls, half are even and half are odd.
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Table PB-1: Powerball White Ball Even/Odd Distribution
Jan 2009
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Num
Even
| Num
Odd
| Num
Combos
| Pct
Combos
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| 5
| 0
| 118,755
| 2.4%
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| 4
| 1
| 712,530
| 14.2%
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| 3
| 2
| 1,589,490
| 31.7%
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| 2
| 3
| 1,648,360
| 32.9%
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| 1
| 4
| 794,745
| 15.9%
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| 0
| 5
| 142,506
| 2.8%
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| 5,006,386
| 100.0
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| Table PB-1b: Powerball Even/Odd Distribution - Jan 2009
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| Num
Balls
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Pct
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| Even
| 19
| 48.72%
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| Odd
| 20
| 51.28%
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| Total
| 39
| 100.00%
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As shown in Tables above, the Even/Odd distributions are not symetrical. This is because both the number of white balls and red Powerballs are odd (59 and 39 respectively). In both cases, there is 1 more odd number than even, which accounts for the difference in probabilities.
From Table PB-1a, 64.6% of the 5 number combinations are made of either 3 even balls and 2 odd balls, or vice versa. The next most common is 4 even and 1 odd or 1 even and 4 even. The rarest numerical combinations are those where the white balls are all even (2.4%) or all odd (2.8%). So starting off, try to avoid combinations containing all odd or all even numbers. This may increase your chances of having a winning combination.
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