California, the Golden State, has long been known for its glitz and glamour, which has only been confirmed by its nearly undefeated winning lottery track record.
With four of the five biggest winners in Powerball history coming from the West Coast state, the total prizes accumulated there are worth more than $6 billion, which is more than any other state has reached in total winnings.
Yet, there may be a secret strategy to these lucky numbers, one that Californian and past lottery winner, Edwin Castro, used.
Castro, who won the $2.04 billion jackpot in 2022 (which amounted to $997 million after taxes), did it with the help of the “sideline player” tactic.
According to Jared James, the founder of Lottoedge.com (which analyzes lottery data), California leads the way in “sideline players,” those who only buy tickets when the jackpot goes exponentially up.
“Once it hits that $500 million mark, people who don’t usually play start coming off the sidelines, and California sticks out as a clear outlier when it comes to that,” James stated.
For lotteries that exceed that marker, California leads the way in ticket sales, followed by Florida, with the two states reportedly representing up to 25% of all tickets sold.
James also pointed out that California has a larger affluent population than many other states, with higher income earners who “might buy $40 worth of tickets” instead of “someone in Idaho who might buy $10 worth,” which also explains the proportions of tickets sold in California.
However, Dr. Curtis Bennett, a Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at California State University Long Beach, argues that “it all comes down to sheer luck.”
“California is so big it’s got a good chance of being one of the places we might see more winners than a smaller state, purely just because of the population,” he said.
According to Dr. Bennett, the odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are about one in 292 million.
Listed below are the biggest Powerball wins in history:
- $2.04B – Won by Edwin Castro of Altadena, California, on Nov. 2022
- $1.76B – Won by a group represented by Theo Struyck, Frazier Park, CA, Oct. 2023
- $1.58B – Won by Marvin and Mae Acosta of Eastvale, California, but shared with winners from Florida and Tennessee, Jan. 2016
- $1.35B – Won by an anonymous player in Lebanon, Maine, Jan. 2023
- $1.08B – Still Unclaimed prize, sold in Los Angeles, California, Jul. 2023
