Lottery director urges Iowans to play responsibly in face of big jackpot

Powerball tickets are expected to be rolling out of Iowa Lottery machines today at a rate of 17-hundred a minute. Tonight’s estimated jackpot of 200-million dollars is the game’s second largest ever and the third-largest lottery jackpot in world history.Iowa Lottery Commissioner Ed Stanek says the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are about 80-million-to-one. He says the odds also indicate there’ll be a new mega-millionaire somewhere in America by ten o’clock tonight.Stanek says there is a 70-percent chance of a jackpot winner tonight, based on the statistics of duplicate plays and the sharing of numbers. Iowans who play Powerball are averaging about two-dollars-50 cents per transaction, which Stanek says -is- responsible. He isn’t concerned about reports of people plunking down 500-dollars at a time to buy tickets. He says a lot of those people are collecting money in pools, and that’s why they’re buying more tickets.The last Iowans to win the Powerball jackpot were the Larry Hasken family of Sabula in January of 2000. They won 31-point-eight million dollars.