The cost of a Powerball ticket will go up from $1 to $2
Officials said the cost will double to $2, but the chances of winning will improve from one in 195 million to one in 175 million.
The starting jackpot will also double, from $20 million to $40 million.
When the new policies go into effect Jan. 15, officials will also select the Powerball from 35 balls instead of the current 39 balls.
Are we still in a recession ? 
If the grand prize were the only possible prize, these changes would almost double the Powerball’s take per ticket. Unless they’re making significant changes to the lesser prizes, they’re going to be making a lot more money off you than they were before.
Given that they’ll be picking from 35 numbers instead of 39, I imagine the lesser prizes will also have better odds provided the conditions remain the same.
I’m pretty sure they’re still going to be making a lot more money, though.
ETA: News article. Chance of winning any prize goes from 1 in 35 to 1 in 31 (roughly). Second highest prize is increasing to $1 million from $200,000. Don’t know about the other prizes.
Jeez. It’s a real-world application of the old saw about the lottery being a tax on those who are bad at math. My local paper has an article about this:
http://www.wlwt.com/money/28423034/detail.html complete with incorrect headline (“Powerball Price To Increase, Along With Odds, Jackpots”) The odds aren’t increasing!
No, your odds of winning the grand prize are increasing. It’s just that your expected loss is also increasing.
To avoid confusion, i think it would be better to say that your odds of winning the grand prize are improving.
Of course, given that your odds of winning the grand prize are so close to zero as to be effectively zero, and are improving to a slightly better level of zero, what this change in policy means is that you’re paying twice as much for a ticket with pretty much the same (virtually zero) chance of winning the big prize.
I’ll be interested to see what this policy does to ticket sales. I’m sure that actuarial types sat down and worked out all the probable developments before the decision was made to raise the price.
Several of the comments seem to ignore:
The payout percentages of state lotteries (2006) range from 52% to almost 79% (a higher variation than I’d have guessed before Googling). This is the single most important number in determining how wasteful it is to spend $X on a lottery.
I think the confusion is because “odds are increasing” is an inherently confusing term. As a horseplayer, if a horse’s odds are higher than that of another, in an efficient market it means his chances of winning the race are lower, or worse, than that of the horse with the lower odds.
Anyway, for Powerball the odds will be better per ticket, but substantially worse per dollar. If I spend $2 on Powerball on December 31st, my odds of any win will be 2 in 35 , or 17.5 to 1; and 195,000,000 to 2 for the big prize, or about 97,500,000 to 1.
On January 1, for my same $2 my odds of any prize go from 17.5 to 1 to 30- to 1. And my odds for the big prize go from 97 and a half million to 1, to 175 million to 1.
They will, no doubt, play up the odds per ticket. And that will suck.
I was thinking about impulse buys. I have won a few bucks, (nothing over a $100) on various lotto/lottery in my life, but I always buy with, “Well I got a dollar in my pocket, why not?”
But two dollars? I’m not likely to impulse buy for two dollars. This could be just me, but I wonder if anyone else feels that way.
It’s like being lazy. I won’t stoop over to pick up a penny or a dime, but I will for a quarter LOL