Americans, Australians (seen here) and New Zealanders love their Powerball.

Walter Hickey, a clever statistics analyst, wrote recently about when you should start to get involved in the Powerball game.

In his long article you can read here - if you have a mathematical bent and a half hour to spare - he basically stated the obvious: that as the jackpot amount increases, so do the number of tickets sold.

In fact this writer has it figured out exactly in a formula. He states for every additional million Powerball adds to the jackpot prize, an additional 217,629 tickets will be bought.

You and I know this is not a good thing. That's because the risk of splitting the jackpot with several other winners grows greater with each person buying a ticket.

The colorful chart above shows how many winners will share the jackpot, in theory.

So what can you do to avoid this problem?

• You should play only when the Powerball jackpot is quite low, say $40 million or under.
• You can play the higher jackpots, but be prepared to share your prize with others.

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