Is Powerball Xs & Os Worth $5?
At the $2 million jackpot advertised for Sunday, November 1, one $5 play is worth about $1.74 before taxes, using the prizes Powerball Xs & Os has actually paid in its 7 drawings. That is 35% of the ticket price. Paid at the full prize chart every week, it would be $1.85, or 37%. For a play to be worth its $5 on average, the jackpot would have to reach about $36.29 million.
Where the value of a play comes from
| Match | Odds | Average paid | Value per play | At chart prize |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 of 8 | 1 in 10,518,300 | $2 million | $0.19 | $0.19 |
| 7 of 8 | 1 in 54,783 | $17,214 | $0.31 | $0.37 |
| 6 of 8 | 1 in 1,361 | $434 | $0.32 | $0.37 |
| 5 of 8 | 1 in 92.8 | $39.14 | $0.42 | $0.43 |
| 4 of 8 | 1 in 14.14 | $7.00 | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| Total for a $5 play | $1.74 | $1.85 | ||
Popular teams shrink the payouts
The prizes below the jackpot are shared within each tier, so a draw full of teams many people pick produces extra winners and smaller checks. The first draw had about 2.5 times the 6-of-8 winners that random picks would produce, and it paid $500 for 7 of 8 instead of $20,000. The columns compare each draw's winners with what the estimated number of plays would produce if everyone picked at random.
| Draw | Teams drawn | Est. plays | 6 of 8 winners | 7 of 8 winners | 7 of 8 paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 25, 2026 |         | 224,360 | 179 (1.1x expected) | 2 (0.5x expected) | $20,000 |
| October 18, 2026 |       | 207,447 | 164 (1.1x expected) | 4 (1.1x expected) | $20,000 |
| October 11, 2026 |      | 204,746 | 138 (0.9x expected) | 5 (1.3x expected) | $20,000 |
| October 4, 2026 |   | 240,014 | 176 (1x expected) | 2 (0.5x expected) | $20,000 |
| September 27, 2026 |  | 360,947 | 298 (1.1x expected) | 10 (1.5x expected) | $20,000 |
| September 20, 2026 |    | 421,965 | 268 (0.9x expected) | 6 (0.8x expected) | $20,000 |
| September 13, 2026 |    | 444,350 | 810 (2.5x expected) | 19 (2.3x expected) | $500 |
How it compares to Powerball
Xs & Os trades a far smaller jackpot for far better odds of hitting it: 1 in 10,518,300against Powerball's 1 in 292,201,338, about 28 times better, and the prize is all cash with no annuity. The catch is the price. At $5 a play, most of what you get back comes from the $7 and $40 prizes, and the jackpot adds little until it grows into the tens of millions. See the Powerball analysis for the same math on the big game.