Florida Lottery produces a lot of Powerball winners. Perhaps you live in a state like, say, Maine and you want to win the lottery, but hardly anyone ever wins from your state. Perhaps you wish you could drive to Florida to buy lotto tickets because people always win in Florida and that’ll increase your chances. Would buying Powerball tickets in Florida really increase your odds of winning?

First off, it’s true – more people win on Powerball in Florida than any other of the participating Powerball states, except for Pennsylvania. Does that mean buying Powerball tickets from Florida Lottery would increase your odds of winning? No, it does not.

The reason that more people win in Florida is that the state has a huge population. So, it’s the law of large numbers that are coming into play. The more people that buy tickets, the more that would actually win. Take, for example, the May 27, 2009 Powerball draw, the one that saw the jackpot reach a massive $232 million. According to the Powerball website, the state of Main produced 6,444 winners and the state of Florida produced 202,696 winners. That’s a big difference… Until you look at the populations of the two states. Maine has a population of approximately 1.3 million and Florida has a population of approximately 16 million. With a larger pool of people, there is a larger pool of lottery players. Not only that, more people vacation to Florida than they do to Maine, adding even more lottery players to the mix. That’s the only reason why there is a big discrepency of lottery winners in certain states.

Actually, you have the exact same odds of winning Powerball no matter where you buy your tickets. So, don’t worry about buying your tickets from Florida Lottery. You can buy them anywhere.

Tino writes about lottery winners on his blog, including Florida lottery winners like Alex Toth, who won $13 million from Florida Lottery in 1990.

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