WASHINGTON — The Powerball jackpot is heating up for Wednesday’s drawing with a grand prize of $815 million. 

If claimed, this prize would rank as the seventh largest jackpot ever in the game. With so much money at stake, many players are curious if there’s a way to enhance their chances of winning.

The simple answer is no. Every number combination shares the same extremely low odds of winning. Therefore, there’s no realistic way to greatly improve your odds by purchasing more tickets. Attempting to buy every possible combination to “ensure” a win would actually cost more than you could gain. 

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot stand at one in 292.2 million. In contrast, the chances of winning smaller prizes ranging from $4 to $1 million are much better.

In recent years, massive lottery jackpots have become more prevalent as officials have tweaked rules and increased ticket prices to elevate the top prizes. 

Players frequently speculate if there’s some strategy involved. Although some numbers have been drawn slightly more often than others, the likelihood remains equal for any number combination.

Rong Chen, a statistics professor, mentioned in a Rutgers University Q&A that all combinations have equal odds. Just because a combination was selected before doesn’t make it any 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.

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 113 times
• 21: Drawn 112 times
• 23: Drawn 110 times
• 33: Drawn 108 times
• 69: Drawn 107 times 
• 27: Drawn 104 times
• 32: Drawn 104 times 
• 36: Drawn 104 times
• 63: Drawn 104 times
• 64: Drawn 104 times

Here are the 10 most common numbers for the red Powerball in the last eight years. 

• 4: Drawn 60 times 
• 21: Drawn 59 times 
• 24: Drawn 58 times
• 18: Drawn 57 times 
• 14: Drawn 55 times 
• 25: Drawn 55 times 
• 9: Drawn 54 times 
• 5: Drawn 52 times 
• 20: Drawn 52 times 
• 3: Drawn 49 times

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 66 times, as of Aug. 26, 2025. The next least commonly drawn number is 49, which has only popped up 71 times in that span (but was last drawn on Aug. 16, 2025). 

As for the red Powerball, one number holds the least-drawn spot: 16, drawn just 37 times in the past eight years. It has been a dry period for number 16 as it hasn’t been drawn since November 2024.

Since two is better than one, we’ll look at Powerball’s most common pairs for main numbers in the last eight years.  

• 21 and 32: Drawn 15 times
• 51 and 61: Drawn 14 times
• 61 and 69: Drawn 14 times
• 37 and 44: Drawn 14 times
• 23 and 32: Drawn 13 times
• 19 and 37: Drawn 12 times
• 40 and 50: Drawn 12 times
• 6 and 35: Drawn 12 times
• 6 and 36: Drawn 12 times
• 37 and 39: Drawn 12 times

While the eye-popping $700 million jackpot is certainly life-changing money, it still wouldn’t crack the top 10 largest Powerball wins.

1. $2.04 Billion – Nov. 7, 2022 – CA
2. $1.765 Billion – Oct. 11, 2023 – CA
3. $1.586 Billion – Jan. 13, 2016 – CA, FL, TN
4. $1.326 Billion – April 6, 2024 – OR
5. $1.08 Billion – July 19, 2023 – CA
6. $842.4 Million – January 1, 2024 – MI
7. $815 Million (est) – Aug. 27, 2025
8. $768.4 Million – March 27, 2019 – WI
9. $758.7 Million – Aug. 23, 2017 – MA
10. $754.6 Million – Feb. 6, 2023 – WA