Melbourne cleaner wins the $80 million Powerball jackpot

The newly minted millionaire is a middle-aged dad who lost his job during Victoria’s multiple lockdowns and was working as a cleaner to survive.

A cleaner from North Melbourne has nabbed Australia’s third biggest lottery prize in history to the tune of $80 million.

The Powerball was drawn on Thursday at 8.30pm and for more than 12 hours the identity of the winner remained a mystery to lottery officials.

About 11am Friday, The Lott revealed that the newly minted millionaire was a middle-aged dad who had lost his job to the coronavirus pandemic and was working as a cleaner to survive.

“I am so excited. I checked my ticket late last night. I couldn’t sleep after that!” the family man told The Lott.

“I lost my job during one of the many lockdowns here in Melbourne. We had only just bought a home and didn’t see it coming.

“I’ve been working as a cleaner ever since to make ends meet.

“Like for so many people, these lockdowns have been really tough for our family.

“But I’ve always said, you’ve just gotta keep trying. Now, look what’s happened.”

The man had a one in 134 million chance of picking the right combination of numbers.

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Powerball.

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The lucky man managed to get all the numbers right.

Those numbers were 17, 10, 4, 26, 19, 23, 21 and the Powerball was 7.

He said he was going to use the staggering amount of money to give his children a headstart for life.

“I am certainly going to pay off the mortgage and the other bills we have to begin with,” he said.

“We’re going to set up our kids for life.

An estimated one in four Aussies purchased a ticket for the draw.

No-one picked the winning numbers last week, causing the $60 million prize money to jackpot to $80 million.

In previous $80 million Powerball draws, ticket sales have peaked just after 5pm on the day of the draw, with more than 4000 tickets selling each minute.

The Victorian man’s win certainly beat the odds, despite a warning from a leading mathematician.

“It’s like putting icing on a very improbable cake,” Dr Stephen Woodcock, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at UTS, told news.com.au when it came to winning the lottery.

Millions of Australians waited with bated breath for draw 1317 to be announced.

Dr Woodcock said there was a one in 134 million chance of a single ticket winning the Thursday $80 million jackpot.

To win the jackpot, the Victorian man matched all seven main numbers plus the Powerball. The probability calculator works like this. For the initial seven balls, ticket holders have:

• a seven in 35 chance of matching the first ball drawn, then
• a six in 34 chance of getting the second, then
• a five in 33 chance of getting the third, then
• a four in 32 chance of matching the fourth, then
• a three in 31 chance of matching the fifth, then
• a two in 30 chance of matching the sixth, then
• a one in 29 chance of matching the first number

Even if you’re one of the lucky few to match these seven numbers, 95 per cent of punters usually fall at the last hurdle, as there’s only a one in 20 chance of your Powerball number being drawn, Dr Woodcock told news.com.au.

You’re more likely to be able to select two random Aussies and find both have been bitten by a snake in last year – an occurrence with a one in 62 million chance - than win the lottery, according to Dr Woodcock.

For women, you’re more likely to become pregnant with quintuplets, which comes with a one in 55 million chance, while finding two wild oysters both of which contain pearls would be a one in one million chance.

The odds of winning division one in Powerball with a standard 12-game QuickPick were one in 11.2 million, according to The Lott.

That is the same entry type that a Sydney mum held in 2019 when she took home $107 million and became the country’s biggest individual lottery winner.

This Victorian man, who will be added to Lotto’s hall of fame, is the third biggest lottery winner in history and the largest ever winner in his state.

The biggest individual lottery winner was a NSW player who scored $107 million in Powerball on 17 January 2019.

Then the second biggest lottery winner scored more than $96 million on 27 August 2019.

The man who won equal first for the last $80 million Powerball prize almost missed out on his money because he put in the wrong mobile number.

Numbers most likely to win

Ahead of the lottery draw, The Lott’s Matt Hart said: “While Powerball is a game of chance, and every number has an equal chance of being drawn, some numbers have been drawn more often than others.”

He revealed the “hot” and “cold” numbers from the last three years.

From Powerball’s main barrel, where seven winning numbers are drawn from 35, the ‘hot’ number is 17, having been drawn 49 times during the past three years.

Seven also ranked highly, being drawn 43 times in that same amount of time.

However, other numbers have barely been pulled out of the pot.

These “cold” numbers are 34, which has only been picked 24 times – so half as many times as 17.

Fifteen also didn’t rank highly, only being drawn 25 times in the last several years.

For the separate Powerball barrel, where a single Powerball number between one and 20 is drawn, there are two numbers that are standouts since 2018.

The number 19 has been drawn 16 times while three has been chosen 13 times.

In contrast, 18 and eight haven’t been too lucky.

Those numbers have only been drawn four and five times respectively.

Last week the winning numbers were 16, 25, 12, 7, 11, 10, 21 and the Powerball was 18.