HOW TO WIN THE JACKPOT!
The bloke with the happiest job in the world shares the secrets to winning big in Powerball
It’s a phone call that can change your life in an instant, and with Powerball jackpots skyrocketing, it’s a phone call more than eight million Aussies dream of receiving every week.
And Matt Hart from The Lott, the group that manages lottery games and scratch-its in Australia, is the lucky man with the happiest job in the world. He gets to make that incredible call announcing, “You’ve won Powerball!” to unsuspecting punters.
“Each year I make around 700 calls to winners, and I still get butterflies when I hear their voice,” Matt tells Woman’s Day.
“I try and call at 8.30pm the night they win, or the next morning. The room where I make that call from is soundproof, so I either get stunned silence, or more often, squeals and screams of excitement.
“The first call I ever made, he didn’t buy it and said if I called again, he would call the police and hung up on me! Another declared no more mowing the lawn or ironing.”
With the Powerball jackpotting to $80 million last week, punters bought up big in the hope they might be the next person to get Matt’s winning phone call.
He says there are “hot and cold” numbers – meaning the numbers least drawn out of the barrel and, more importantly, the numbers most frequently drawn out of the barrel.
“From the main barrel, where seven numbers are drawn from a total pool of 35 numbers, the luckiest ‘hot’ number is 17, having been drawn 28 times over the past two years, followed by 11, 2, 26, 7 and 27,” says Matt.
“But many opt for cold (or unlucky) numbers in the hope it’s their turn to be drawn, and the coldest are 15, 12, 6, 31, 26 and 18.”
The odds of winning Powerball with a 12-game Quick Pick are just over one in 11 million, yet that’s all it took for a Sydney mum to win a record $107 million in Powerball in January last year.
Out of 14 Powerball division one winners last year, NSW proved to be the luckiest state, followed by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia respectively – and eight of those wins were with Quick Pick entries.
“We’ve had 46 division two winners over the past eight weeks that have been just one number shy of winning the entire division one prize,” says Matt.
‘I either get stunned silence or screams of excitement’