ORLANDO, Fla. – The Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night's drawing grew to an estimated $500 million.
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NUMBERS DRAWN: 2-11-47-62-63. Powerball: 17
7-time lottery winner Richard Lustig's advice: play the same numbers, play every drawing, and buy as many tickets as you can afford.
"One of the things I preach to people all the time is don't buy quick picks. People out there, they hear me say that or they see me say that in an interview, and they say, 'What do you mean don't buy quick picks? I always buy quick picks.' My answer is, 'Have you won yet?'" said Lustig.
Lustig has won seven grand prizes - three with scratch-off tickets, three in Fantasy Five, and most recently $842,000 in the now-discontinued Mega Money.
He claimed to have researched lotteries around the world for the past 20 years and concluded that the same numbers have hit in the same lotteries no more than six times, worldwide. He believes that every time your numbers don't win, your chances of winning in the next drawing go up.
Lustig said that's why he plays the same numbers every time there's a drawing. He will only change them when they win.
But the director of Mathnasium in Winter Park, a mathematics tutoring center, insisted that, statistically, it doesn't matter which numbers you play, random or not.
"The odds are exactly the same," said Kaitlyn Kurtz. "So if you were to pick the same numbers this week and the same numbers next week, the odds are the same."
While directing Mathnasium, Kurtz also attends UCF, working on 4 different degrees concurrently, including aerospace engineering and computer science.
"Your odds will never change for picking the same numbers, because even when they get a winning set of numbers, they don't take that set of numbers out," said Kurtz. "So next week it's just as likely to win with those numbers as it was the week before."
"Funny story, my dad has been using the same numbers since before I was born," said Kurtz. "So for the last 25 years, he's been using the same numbers and he hasn't won yet! So picking the same numbers doesn't increase your odds, it's the same every week."
Kurtz believes Lustig is very, very lucky.
According to Powerball, the odds of winning the jackpot at 1 in 292 million. The odds of winning $100 are 1 in 14,494. The odds of winning $4 are 1 in 38.
For comparison, the odds of getting a hole-in-one are 1 in 12,500, according to Wikipedia.
The odds of getting struck by lightning in the U.S., according to National Geographic, are 1 in 700,000.
The Powerball drawing can be seen live on News 6, just before the 11 p.m. newscast.