美国强力球4.5亿美元彩票头奖引起疯狂

AS IT IS 2016-01-07 $450 Million Powerball Prize Causes Frenzy 美国强力球4.5亿美元彩票头奖引起疯狂

Are you feeling lucky?

“The hope keeps you going. And someone’s gotta win.”

News spread early in the week that the Powerball lottery¹ – a game of chance played in all but six U.S. states – would top $450 million before the drawing late Wednesday night.

If there is a last-minute surge² in buying the $2 tickets, the final jackpot could become one of Powerball’s largest of all time.

Last year, the pot of money, or jackpot, reached $564 million. Winners bought tickets in Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Texas.

The last Powerball winner was selected in November. The jackpot has increased since there was a winner.

The largest Powerball prize happened in 2013 when a woman from Florida won $590 million.

The Associated Press news agency reports the largest U.S. lottery jackpot was won in a Mega Millions game in 2012. It was $656 million.

Before you get too excited, think of this.

The odds³ of winning are one-in-292 million. Those odds are calculated from all possible combinations using the numbers one through 69. An additional bonus number is called the “powerball” which can be one through 26. 

A mathematician⁴ runs the website durangobill.com. He provides a breakdown⁵ of how to calculate the odds.

If more tickets are sold, the only thing that changes is that the odds of multiple jackpot winners increases slightly.

And what if you win?

The winner can choose to receive her or his winnings in one payment, called a lump-sum. After paying federal tax on those winnings, which the government considers income, the winner would receive over $200 million.

The state where the winner lives may also take 4 percent to 8 percent more in state taxes.

That would leave the winner with around $190 million.

Enough to live a nice life, right?

VOA Learning English asked people buying tickets in Washington, D.C., what they would do with the money if they won.

“What’s the first thing? ... First thing I’m going to do is retire. Then I’m going to move to Georgia. Buy me a beautiful home, and just fish.”

“I would be shocked. But I would probably give back to my community. And look out for my family, and the people that looked out for me.”

In the U.S., the store that sells the winning ticket gets a bonus, too. It varies from state to state, but it could be as much as 1 percent of the total prize.

One man named Reza, who runs a store in Washington, told us what he would do with the bonus.

“Actually, I’ve not confirmed. But I hear they’ll give me $1 million. [What would that mean to you?] It’s very good for me. [What can do you do with $1 million?] I’ll expand my business, yeah.”

But the Powerball lottery is nothing compared to the big Christmas lottery each year in Spain.

There, “El Gordo,” which means “the fat one,” has thousands of winners and a prize pool of close to $3 billion.

Words in This Story

breakdown – n. the process or result of showing the different parts of something in order to understand it more clearly

jackpot – n. a usually large amount of money won in a game of chance

lottery – n. a way of raising money for a government, charity, etc., in which many tickets are sold and a few of the tickets are chosen by chance to win prizes

surge – n. a sudden, large increase

1 lottery   

n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事

参考例句：

• He won no less than ￡5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
• They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。

2 surge   

n.汹涌，澎湃；vi.汹涌，强烈感到，飞涨；vt.放开，松手

参考例句：

• The surge travelled southwards along the coast.浪涛沿着海岸向南涌去。
• It failed to stimulate a surge of investment in industry.这没有能刺激工业投资的激增。

3 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

4 mathematician   

n.数学家

参考例句：

• The man with his back to the camera is a mathematician.背对着照相机的人是位数学家。
• The mathematician analyzed his figures again.这位数学家再次分析研究了他的这些数字。

5 breakdown   

n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌

参考例句：

• She suffered a nervous breakdown.她患神经衰弱。
• The plane had a breakdown in the air,but it was fortunately removed by the ace pilot.飞机在空中发生了故障，但幸运的是被王牌驾驶员排除了。