Tonight's Powerball Jackpot Bumped to $115,000,000

• by New York Lottery

The New York Lottery today announced the estimated jackpot for tonight's Powerball drawing has jumped $8,000,000 to a whopping $115,000,000 based on strong sales across all 33 participating lottery jurisdictions.

"This is the kind of roll up we envisioned when we entered negotiations with the Powerball group to allow the cross-selling of Powerball and Mega MIllions tickets," said New York Lottery Director Gordon Medenica. "We anticipated faster roll ups and higher jackopts than ever before and that seems to be proving true right out of the gate."

Powerball drawings take place every Wednesday and Saturday. Mega Millions drawings will continue every Tuesday and Friday. Both drawing take place at about 11:00 p.m. New Yorkers may purchase Powerball tickets at more than 16,000 licensed retail locations statewide up until 9 p.m. on the day of the drawing.

To play Powerball, players must select five numbers from a field of 59 and a single Powerball number from a separate field of 39. A player who matches all 5 numbers plus the Powerball wins the jackpot. The second prize in the Powerball game is $200,000. Prize levels three through seven feature cash prizes ranging from $10,000 to $3 respectively. Powerball also offers an optional play feature called "Power Play" that allows players to multiply their prizes won. Before every draw a multiplier number from 2X to 5X is drawn for players to use to multiply their winnings, except for the jackpot. Each Powerball game cost $1. The Power Play optional feature costs an extra $1.

Winning number information for all Powerball drawings is available online at www.nylottery.org and www.powerball.com. Players may also visit their favorite Lottery retailer to get winning number information for all games.

The New York Lottery continues to be North America's largest and most profitable Lottery, earning more than $36.7 billion in education support statewide since its founding over 40 years ago. The Lottery contributed nearly $2.54 billion in fiscal year 2008-09 to help support education in New York State, which was over 12 percent of total state education funding to local school districts. The Lottery's ongoing commitment to education also includes the awarding of more than 1,100 Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) Scholarships annually to high school students pursuing their higher education in New York State. Since 1999, the Lottery has awarded more than 11,500 scholarships representing a total commitment of almost $50 million.

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