With nine people winning Powerball tickets worth at least $1 million this year in West Virginia, the state seems to be a favorite for hitting the gold, the Associated Press reported.
While five other states have had more people win $1 million or more, West Virginia is No. 1 per capita, averaging one Powerball ticket worth $1 million for every 200,000 of its 1.8 million residents.
"It's just a lucky streak that we're on that's amazing," said Randy Burnside, a spokesman for the West Virginia Lottery. "Hopefully we'll have a lot more this year."
The odds, however, of winning the Powerball is the same anywhere it is played.
Only five other states were able to sell more of the $1 million-plus tickets than West Virginia after Saturday's drawings.
But all of them had much larger populations: New York (19), Florida (17), California (13) and Pennsylvania and Texas (10), said executive director Chuck Strutt of the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, which oversees Powerball.
With two of the four Powerball tickets matching all six numbers this year, California proved to be the master of the grand-prize winners, according to the AP.
"But when taking population into account, West Virginia is No. 1. Vermont, with two Powerball millionaires and 626,630 residents, is second and Louisiana, with seven winners and a population of 4.6 million, was third," the AP reported.
The median household income of West Virginia is claimed to be among the worst of the nation.
"We're just tickled to death to be able to create life-changing money for folks in the state," Burnside said.
In early 2012, Powerball rules were changed as a way to increase jackpots and payouts. The odds of matching the first five numbers in the Powerball game are about 1 in 5 million.
Apart from Powerball, two tickets from the popular Mega Millions game worth at least $1 million have also been claimed in West Virginia this year, the AP reported.
