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The Powerball Lottery requires a player to make 2 choices: (1) Pick 5 numbers out of a set of 55 white balls; and (2) Pick 1 Power Ball from a set of 42 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 55. 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 42 Power Balls, half are even and half are odd.
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| Table PB-1a: Powerball Even/Odd Distribution
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Num
Even
| Num
Odd
| Num
Combos
| Pct
Combos
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| 5
| 0
| 80,730
| 2.3%
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| 4
| 1
| 491,400
| 14.1%
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| 3
| 2
| 1,105,650
| 31.8%
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| 2
| 3
| 1,149,876
| 33.1%
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| 1
| 4
| 552,825
| 15.9%
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| 0
| 5
| 98,280
| 2.8%
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| 3,478,761
| 100.0
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| Table PB-1b: Powerball Even/Odd Distribution
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| Num
Balls
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| Even
| 21
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| Odd
| 21
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| Total
| 42
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As shown in Table PB-1a, 64.9% 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 or all odd. In both of these cases, there is only a 2.6% chance of either one occuring. So starting off, try to avoid combinations containing all odd or all even numbers. This may increase your chances of having a winning combination.
Note that the table is not symetrical. There are more combinations containing Odd numbers than Even numbers. The reason for this is that the white ball pool is numbered 1 to 55. In this, there is 1 more odd number than even, thus accounting for the difference in probabilities.
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