The Powerball jackpot has climbed to a record $1.6 billion ahead of the next drawing on Saturday, setting off a frenzy of ticket buying nationwide by routine lottery players and even some skeptics, hopeful that the 1-in-292.2-million odds of winning will tilt in their favor.
The winner would receive the largest payout in U.S. lottery history, eclipsing the $1.586 billion payout in 2016 to three Powerball winners in California, Florida and Tennessee, which set a world record, officials said.
The winning numbers Saturday night were: 28, 45, 53, 56, 69 and 20.
At a Marathon gas station in Coral Gables, Florida, just outside Miami, the buzz from customers on Thursday inspired Saria Lopez, a cashier, to buy a Powerball ticket, which she said she usually does not do.
“One is enough, with luck,” Lopez, 60, said in Spanish.
At a Chevron gas station in Miami on Thursday, Ruben Perez, 82, played a scratch-off ticket and fantasized about what he would do if one of the five Powerball tickets he bought had the winning numbers.
He said he would “take my wife and go somewhere better” than Miami, where he has lived for 20 years. One possible destination, he said, would be his wife’s native Honduras.
Players can buy a $2 Powerball ticket in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The five states that do not participate are Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah.
In the Brooklyn borough of New York on Friday, Powerball tickets were selling in a trickle at bodegas and liquor stores across Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Y. Patel, the owner of GB Convenience Store & Deli, said that ahead of a Mega Millions drawing a couple of months ago, people were spending $40 to $50 on tickets. This past week, though, Powerball sales have been about the same as normal, he said, noting that he had sold only two tickets as of Friday.
“No one thinks they are going to win,” Patel said.
The jackpot surged to $1 billion on Monday after several weeks of drawings without anyone purchasing a ticket that matched all six numbers. Saturday’s drawing will be the 40th since the last Powerball jackpot was won on Aug. 3, with a winner in Pennsylvania claiming the $207 million prize.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .