Your shot at big prize: microscopic

This week, the lottery launches Powerball, a game with multimillion-dollar jackpots

The coast-to-coast Powerball lottery game rolls into North Carolina this week, promising giant jackpots for winners and plenty of daydreaming for the rest.

Tickets go on sale Tuesday morning at 5,700 convenience stores, gas stations, groceries and other outlets statewide.

The first drawing for North Carolinians is scheduled at 10:59 p.m. Wednesday. The estimated jackpot isn't yet known, though it will be at least $15 million and could be more than $35 million.

Powerball is a game in which players choose six numbers and hope they match ones drawn later.

It attracts attention, headlines and store traffic because it offers a chance at life-altering paydays. The top prize can reach a monstrous nine figures, under a payout plan covering 29 years.

But the odds against winning are just as staggering. Powerball will lay the longest odds of any game offered in North Carolina's lottery, which began with scratch-off tickets two months ago.

The number of winners might be a surprise, too: Only about one jackpot is won per month. The game has drawings twice a week and includes players from 28 other states plus the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Although billboards across the state will tout the top prize, winners typically end up with one-third that much, a review of past winnings in other states shows. That's because the prize is adjusted into a lump sum of cash, which most players take, and then taxes are factored in.

"With Powerball, it has this glamour to it," said state lottery director Tom Shaheen. "It has the big jackpots and the dream for people that maybe they can win."

Most won't.

The chance of hitting the jackpot is 1 in 146 million.

Smaller prizes are available, too, including a second prize of $200,000. The odds of winning it are 1 in 3.5 million.

The smallest prize is $3.

What gets attention, though, is the jackpots, which paid two families in Oregon $164 million in cash before taxes last year and put them on the cover of national magazines. This year, eight meat packers in Nebraska were paid $15.5 million each before taxes and were shown live on CNN when they showed up to collect it.

Don't hold your breath

It could be months, even years, before a North Carolinian wins the top prize.

Colorado has yet to see a winner, nearly five years after the game started there.

Shaheen, who is a former director of the New Mexico lottery, said it took four years after joining the game there before anyone won.

In South Carolina, which joined Powerball in October 2002, no one from the state has won the jackpot. Three North Carolinians have won, though, after purchasing tickets in South Carolina.

"It is a game for people who like to fantasize -- it's a glitz and glamour thing," said Ernie Passailaigue, South Carolina's lottery director. "You know, 'What would I do with $200 million?'

"Chances are it's not going to happen. But the appeal is there because somebody does win, like meat packers in Nebraska."

North Carolina, with 8.7 million people, will be one of the largest states offering Powerball. That might lead to a winner more quickly than in other states, lottery officials said.

Powerball won't be the lottery's biggest-selling game; instant tickets are expected to bring in most of the money for education programs. Still, Powerball should generate about 30 percent of the lottery's predicted $1.2 billion in sales, judging by what happens in other states.

A News & Observer review of the 138 Powerball jackpots over the past 10 years shows that:

* By far, winners let the computer choose the numbers. Lottery officials say most players do not select their own numbers. Since 1996, only 13 percent of jackpot winners have picked their own.