What would you do if you won $40 million?
Chances are you probably won't, unless you can beat the one in 38,383,800 odds.
"If you buy five lines of Powerball in a week, you're actually 10 times more likely to die in a road crash in that same week," Auckland University Statistics Professor Russell Millar says.
But you've got to be in it to win it, right? That's what all the other ticket holders are telling themselves.
Not even the Chief Executive of Lotto Wayne Pickup knows exactly how many other players you're up against.
"We are seeing about three times as many people come in to the stores. On MyLotto on Wednesday night we saw 10 times as many people logging on [as usual].
"Retailers are getting run off their feet, we're trying to keep up. We had to deliver more paper today so the tills didn't run out of paper."
They're so inundated, they've had to order more bandwidth for the MyLotto website.
"MyLotto's handling the volumes really, really well, we are going into uncharted waters... It's handling 30,000 people at any one time quite comfortably, we just don't know what it's going to look like tomorrow night."
So Mr Pickup's tip is to buy your ticket early.
"From 7pm [on Saturday] we see a huge spike in traffic so that means website may slow down a little bit," he says.
"The best way is to buy your ticket today or tomorrow morning avoid the queues in the store or avoid the big spike we see on MyLotto."
The public perception is there's a higher chance of winning because the money has to go, and that's not wrong.
"If first division doesn't win it, second division will," Mr Pickup says. "It rolls down, so we could have a situation where dozens of people share $40 million."
Prof Russell says first of all, discourage your friends from buying a ticket.
"Because the less people who buy a ticket, the better you are going to be."
But he said your chances of winning may be better if you are willing to share the cash.
"I did some number crunching and if 40 million tickets are sold... there's about a two-thirds chance that the Powerball jackpot will be hit, but there's a one-third chance that it won't and then the division one winners will get it and there could be a bunch of those to share it with."
And in terms of winning numbers, two is your best bet: "Number two is really, really hot, it's come out 69 times, compared to number nine which has only come out 33 times."
Prof Russell says remember if someone makes an offer that sounds too good to be true, it is.
"My advice is don't trust anyone who tells you they have a system, don't pay for it. Every number has the same chance of coming out," he says.
"Just try and pick the numbers that give you the most fun, otherwise just go for those lucky dips."
Newshub.
