What the extra dollar actually buys

Every lottery advertises the add-ons and none of them prices them. They are priceable: the ball pool is published, the prize multiples are published, and neither depends on anything we have to estimate. So here is what a dollar buys in New Jersey, next to what the base ticket's non-jackpot prizes are worth per dollar — and the order may surprise you.

Where the dollar goes	On sale in New Jersey?	Returns per $1	How exact
The base ticket, below the jackpot	Always — it is the ticket	16c	Exact. Fixed prizes, published odds.
Power Play (+$1)	Yes	46c–50c	Exact. The range is the 10× ball, which is only in the drum below a $150 million jackpot.
Double Play (+$1)	Yes	53c	Exact, and the only one with no jackpot in it at all.

Read the column again: the add-ons return roughly three times what the base ticket's own prize table does. That is not an argument for buying them — every row is still a loss, and the base ticket's missing value is in the jackpot, which the add-ons mostly do not touch. It is an argument that "Power Play is a rip-off, just buy more lines" is the opposite of what the arithmetic says.

Power Play multiplies everything except two tiers: the jackpot, which it never touches, and Match 5, which goes from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 on a 2× and stays at $2,000,000 on a 10×. Pricing it as mean multiplier × prize table — which is what every explainer does — overstates it by more than half.

What a New Jersey ticket is worth right now

The advertised jackpot is $440 million. The cash value is about $188 million, because the headline is a 30-year annuity and nobody takes it. At that jackpot our sales model puts the chance of having to share a win at enough that a winning ticket is worth 92% of the prize on average rather than all of it. Then New Jersey withholds 10.75% — about $20 million of that cash value — and the federal 24% comes off on top of that.

The withholding only comes off the jackpot term here, not off the whole figure. Nearly all of a ticket's non-jackpot value sits in the $4.00 and $7.00 tiers, which no state withholds on; taxing those too would push the number down in a way that happens to flatter our own conclusion, so we do not. The draw-by-draw chart behind this is on the Powerball page.

Hot and cold numbers

The drawing is national, so the frequencies are too — there is no New Jersey hot number, only a Powerball one. Over 1,415 draws of the current 5/69 + 1/26 matrix, 21 has come up most (126 times against 103 expected) and 51 has waited longest, 55 draws.

21 has come up most often, 126 times. Each number averages about 103 over 1,415 draws, and whichever number happens to lead normally finishes around 23 ahead. 21 is 23 ahead, so this is an ordinary spread rather than a streak. 13 has come up least, 76 times.

New Jersey's own draw games

Powerball is the same everywhere. These are not — New Jersey Lottery runs them, and we hold their full history.

• 

  Pick 3

  Daily · 12,208 draws on file

  053
• 

  Pick 4

  Daily · 12,204 draws on file

  7029
• 

  Cash 5

  Daily · 6,104 draws on file

  510151618
• 

  Pick 6

  Monday · Thursday · Saturday · 1,813 draws on file

  91023273235

All New Jersey lottery results →

New Jersey Powerball questions

Can you buy Power Play in New Jersey?

Yes. It costs $1 a play on top of the $2 ticket and multiplies every prize below the jackpot by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 — the 10 only when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. We price that extra dollar at about 46 cents at a large jackpot and 50 cents when the 10× ball is in the drum.

Is Double Play available in New Jersey?

Yes. For $1 your numbers go into a second drawing straight after the main one, with its own prize table topping out at $10 million. Every prize in it is fixed and none of them rolls, which makes it the one multi-state bet whose expected value is exact: about 53 cents per dollar. 30 of the 48 lotteries sell it.

How much tax does New Jersey take from a Powerball win?

New Jersey withholds 10.75% (prizes over $500,000; 5% between $10,000 and $500,000), on top of the 24% held back federally. On the cash value of the jackpot as it stands now that is about $20 million to the state alone. Withholding is not the final bill — what you actually owe is settled when you file. Run your own number through the calculator.

Are Powerball prizes in New Jersey the same as the national prize chart?

Yes. Every prize below the jackpot is a set cash amount in New Jersey, exactly as the national chart prints it. Only California pays pari-mutuel instead.

How old do you have to be to play Powerball in New Jersey?

18. New Jersey Lottery sets it, and a winning ticket has to be claimed in the jurisdiction where it was bought.

Where were the New Jersey Powerball numbers drawn?

In Tallahassee, Florida, like every Powerball drawing — one drawing serves all 48 jurisdictions. The numbers on this page are the same numbers as everywhere else; what the page adds is what they are worth to a New Jersey ticket. The national analysis is here.

Where these facts come from

The winning numbers are cross-checked against more than one official source before they go up — every source and every correction is listed. The New Jersey-specific rules were read from powerball.com and New Jersey Lottery on 2026-09-22, and bao draws jurisdictions re-reads the published lists on every run and fails if either has moved. How the expected values are computed.