Not one, but two winning Powerball tickets worth $200,000 a piece were sold at the same Manhattan store for Saturday night’s huge drawing, according to the New York Lottery.
The Bottle Zone Wine and Liquor store located at 1875 Lexington Ave. in East Harlem defied the odds and sold two winning Powerball Powerplay tickets, each worth $200,000 to the lucky purchasers. Those tickets matched four of the five numbers plus the Powerball drawn on Dec. 30; the Powerplay is an extra bet that quadrupled what is normally a $50,000 prize.
Each of the winners defied some significant odds in scoring just the third-place prize. According to the New York Lottery, a player has nearly a one-in-a-million chance (1 in 913,129.18, to be exact) of matching four of the five numbers plus the Powerball on their ticket.
Meanwhile, no one matched all five numbers and the Powerball Saturday, missing out on a grand prize worth more than $700 million; the jackpot for the New Year’s Day drawing on Monday has now swelled to over $800 million.
The winning numbers were 10-11-26-27-34, with a Powerball of 7. Nationally, Saturday’s drawing resulted in five second-prize winners each worth $1 million, including one sold in upstate New York.
In addition to the two $200,000 winners sold at The Bottle Zone, another third-prize winner, this one worth just $50,000, was sold during Saturday’s drawing in New York City, at the S&Z Bay Ridge Farmers Market located at 8504B 4th Ave. in Brooklyn.
As for hitting the big jackpot, your odds of matching all five drawn numbers and the Powerball are truly astronomical: 1 in 292,201,338. To put that in perspective, as one University of Buffalo study showed, you have a better chance of being elected president of the United States than you do of hitting the Powerball jackpot.
Saturday’s drawing was the fourth time in 2023 in which the Powerball jackpot exceeded $700 million. But with no winner drawn, that massive jackpot carries over into the new year, with $810 million potentially up for grabs in the Jan. 1 drawing.
Before taxes, the jackpot has its full value with an annuitized payment, and a cash value of $408.9 million for those who want their jackpot in a lump-sum payment.
