Powerball Draws Tonight: $793 Million, a 9:59 P.M. Texas Deadline With Destiny, and Odds of 1 in 292 Million
No ticket has matched all six numbers since August 12. Tonight in Tallahassee's draw studio — watched by every $2 ticket in Texas — the jackpot stands at $793 million, already bigger than the tenth-largest prize in the game's history.
Some time around 9:59 p.m. Central tonight, six balls will settle the largest question in Texas convenience stores: whether the Powerball jackpot that has been rolling since August 12 grows again or lands on somebody. The estimated prize for Monday's drawing is $793 million as an annuity, or $339.9 million in cash, both before taxes — a figure that already exceeds the tenth-largest jackpot ever won, the $768.4 million a Wisconsin ticket took in 2019. The run began after a ticket sold in Illinois claimed $1.04 billion on August 12, and it has survived every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday since, including Halloween night, when the numbers 2, 4, 18, 50 and 56 with Powerball 20 matched nobody's full ticket.
Saturday was not a shutout. Three tickets matched all five white balls and missed only the Powerball, and one of them — sold in North Carolina, with the Power Play option — is worth $2 million. That is the shape of this game's cruelty and its appeal: the difference between $2 million and $793 million was a single red ball. The honest arithmetic belongs in every draw-day story: a ticket costs $2, and the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. A winner tonight chooses between the annuity — the full $793 million, paid over time — and the $339.9 million cash option.
For Texas, the machinery is the Texas Lottery's: Powerball tickets are sold at lottery retailers across the state, and North Texas has been checking the same numbers as everyone else since this jackpot passed half a billion. What Monday adds is simply the calendar — this is the drawing the weekend built toward, the one Saturday's roll created. By 10 p.m. Central, either the run is over and somewhere a $2 ticket is worth more than most companies, or Wednesday's jackpot opens with a nine in front of it. The balls do not care either way. That is rather the point of them.
