Live in Delaware and like the number 61? Your chances in Powerball are better than most

Dedicated lottery players may want to consider a move to Delaware – and pick the number 61 – if they want a chance at winning the jackpot.

A new study from Lottery Geeks shows that the First State has the highest percentage of lottery winners of any U.S. state.

And separate research has revealed the numbers most likely (and least likely) to be selected in the Powerball.

Experts from gambling site CSGO analyzed the most frequently drawn numbers in more than 950 draws between 2015 and 2023.

It found that the infamously unlucky number 13 was the least common, while the number 61 was found to be the ‘luckiest’ number after being chosen 90 times in that period.

The findings come as the top prize for Saturday’s Powerball drawing is currently an estimated $935 million – the fifth largest in gaming history.

If you win this Easter weekend, the cash payout will be approximately $450 million.

Powerball is one of the most popular lottery games in the US, with more than 181 million Americans playing every year.

The largest Powerball jackpot ever, in November 2022, was advertised as $2.04 billion.

According to Powerball, the overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.87, based on a $2 game. The odds of winning the top prize are 1 in 292,201,338.

In the game, players choose five main numbers between 1 and 69 and one ‘Powerball number’ between 1 and 26.

To determine the ‘luckiest’ numbers, last year’s CSGOluck.com study took into account the most frequently chosen numbers in the main part of the draw.

After number 61, number 32 turned out to be the second ‘happiest’, having been chosen 89 times between 2015 and 2023.

The number 63 was the third ‘luckiest’ number and was drawn 88 times over the period.

After number 13, according to the research, numbers 49 and 34 were drawn the least often. Both have been elected just 54 times in the past eight years.

The number 29 was chosen only 57 times between 2015 and 2023, it turned out.

Meanwhile, a separate study from Lottery Geeks analyzed the number of Powerball and Mega Millions winners in every state in the US and compared it to their total population – to reveal the ‘luckiest’ states.

The study did not assess whether these states happened to have a higher number of lottery players, as that data is not available.

Delaware is home to 10 Powerball winners out of a population of 989,948. It means that the state has 10.10 winners per 1 million inhabitants.

However, there have been no Mega Millions winners, dropping the total number of lottery winners to 5.05 in every million.

It was followed by New Hampshire, which has 11 Powerball winners for a population of 1,377,529 – or eight winners per million residents. In third place was Rhode Island, with a winning rate of 7.29 winners per million people.

Indiana came in fourth and has the highest number of champions overall, at 39. This means residents of the state – which has a population of 1,097,379 – have a 5.75 in a million chance of winning the jackpot.

The top ten was completed by: Missouri, Nebraska, West Virginia, Kansas, Minnesota and Kentucky.

The study also looked at which states were home to any Mega Millions winners.

The results showed that Indiana and Missouri each had two, while Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island and New Hampshire had one.

The data comes from lottery data, while population numbers are tracked from the US census.

The Powerball jackpot is up for grabs after a lucky winner in New Jersey won a historic $1.13 billion jackpot in the Mega Millions on Tuesday night.

After a series of 30 drawings with no jackpot winner, a ticket with all five numbers plus the Mega Ball was finally sold in Bayonne, New Jersey.

But DailyMail.com’s analysis shows the winner is likely to take home less than a quarter of the $1.13 billion advertised on billboards.

That’s because if they accepted their prize as a lump sum, as almost everyone else does, they would receive $540 million. After taxes are subtracted, $280 million remains.

Making matters worse for the winner is that New Jersey has one of the highest state taxes in the country, forcing winners to give up nearly 11 percent of their prize.

The jackpot amount that makes headlines and is advertised in stores, gas stations and roadside billboards is not actually the amount that lottery organizers have in the prize pool.

Instead, it is the total amount that would be paid to a winner in installments over 30 years if the amount they hold were invested in government bonds. That figure is higher when interest rates are higher, as they are now.

It means that lottery jackpots are now more inflated than ever before and that winners over the past twenty years will be punished more than anyone else if they choose to accept their winnings as a lump sum.

“You have to pay Uncle Sam, the federal government, but also state taxes,” Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based attorney who has advised lottery winners in the past, told DailyMail.com.