Saturday Powerball jackpot is at $875 million, third-highest amount

July 14 (UPI) -- Saturday's Powerball lottery was worth an estimated $875 million as of Friday morning. The cash option was worth $441.9 million. It's the third-largest Powerball jackpot.

The two largest Powerball jackpots were the world record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot won last year, and the $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot won in 2016.

While there was no jackpot winner Wednesday, there were two winning tickets, sold in Indiana and Florida, worth $1 million each. Twenty-six tickets won $50,000 prizes.

The jackpot was last hit in the April 19, 2023, drawing in Ohio. There have been 36 consecutive drawings without a winner since then.

Odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.

But if that is discouraging, consider this: The odds of being born are at least one in 400 trillion, according to self-help author Mel Robbins in a 2011 TEDx Talk.

"The odds that you exist at all are basically zero," Harvard's Dr. Ali Binazir concluded.

There's nothing that can be done to improve the odds of winning. Buying more tickets statistically won't help.

In fact, Powerball players are more likely to be attacked by a grizzly bear at Yellowstone National Park (1 in 2.7 million visits) than to win the jackpot.

If some lucky winning person beats the odds, they will have a choice of taking the $875 million in one immediate payment and 29 annual ones that increase by 5% each year or taking a lump sum of $441.9 million. Both amounts are before taxes.

Powerball is played in 45 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.