Powerball jackpot: What numbers get drawn the most?

Even though the odds are the same no matter what you pick, some Powerball numbers have been drawn more frequently than others in recent years.

WASHINGTON — The Powerball jackpot for Monday’s drawing is a massive $1.55 billion — the third-largest jackpot in the history of the game and the fourth-highest jackpot in U.S. lottery history. And all that cash on the line has players wondering if there’s a way to improve their odds.

The quick answer is no. All number combinations have the same minuscule odds of winning. So really there’s no way to significantly improve your odds by buying more tickets. You’d actually lose money if you tried to buy every possible combination to “guarantee” a win.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are one in 292.2 million. The odds of winning smaller prizes, ranging from $1 million to $2, are significantly better.

Over the past few years, huge lottery jackpots have become more common as lottery officials have changed the rules and ticket prices to boost top prizes.

Are some lottery numbers luckier?

Players often wonder if there’s a strategy to it. Some numbers have been drawn a bit more often than others, but your chances remain the same for any combination.

Statistics professor Rong Chen said in a Q&A article from Rutgers University that any combination has the same odds. Being selected in the past doesn’t mean a combination is more or less likely to win: “Those numbers have the same chance of winning as any other number today.”

Chen said combinations that other players are less likely to pick, like strong patterns or numbers that are too high to be a birthdate, might reduce your chances of having to share the jackpot. That doesn’t make you any more likely to actually win, though.

What are the ‘luckiest’ Powerball numbers?

Even though the odds for every number are the same, we wanted to take a look at the “luckiest” numbers in Powerball’s last several years.

Here are the 10 most common numbers to be drawn on the five white balls over the past nearly eight years, according to LottoNumbers.com.

61: Drawn 90 times
32: Drawn 89 times
63: Drawn 87 times
21: Drawn 86 times
36: Drawn 84 times
23: Drawn 82 times
69: Drawn 81 times
37: Drawn 79 times
62: Drawn 78 times
39: Drawn 78 times

Most common Powerball numbers

Here are the 11 most common numbers for the red Powerball in the last eight years.

18: Drawn 49 times
24: Drawn 48 times
4: Drawn 47 times
14: Drawn 41 times
26: Drawn 40 times
5: Drawn 39 times
25: Drawn 39 times
3: Drawn 39 times
21 Drawn 38 times
13: Drawn 38 times
11: Drawn 38 times

Least common numbers for Powerball

The main number that has been drawn the least number of times during the last eight years is 13. The number has only been drawn 50 times out of 947 total drawings, as of Oct. 7, 2023. The next least commonly drawn number is 34, which has only popped up 52 times in that span.

As for the red Powerball, one number holds the least-drawn spot: 15, drawn just 27 times in the past eight years. It has been a dry period for number 15 as it hasn’t been drawn since February 2023.