Double Your (Potential) Pleasure: A Primer On Powerball Double Play

For some people, three Powerball drawings in a week is plenty.

For others, though, six drawings sound a lot more fun than three.

This week, North Carolina became the latest state — the 26th, if you’re keeping score at home — to add the Double Play feature to its menu, giving lottery players a second chance to win every night there’s a Powerball drawing. (For a little extra financial investment, of course.)

Double Play officially arrived in North Carolina on Sunday, with sales starting ahead of Monday night’s drawing.

“The N.C. Education Lottery is excited about giving our Powerball players a new way to win $10 million,” N.C. Education Lottery CEO Mark Michalko said in a press release. “It’s always fun to give North Carolina more chances to win a life-changing prize.”

So, how does Double Play work?

Standard Powerball tickets cost $2, and in many states there’s an option for an additional dollar to purchase the Power Play, which multiplies the prize for non-jackpot wins.

Double Play is a different sort of bonus game for an extra buck. (And yes, in states that offer the Power Play and Double Play, players can add both of them to a single ticket, making it a $4 purchase in total.)

With Double Play, immediately after the Powerball drawing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, there’s a second drawing. Six new ping-pong balls are selected — five white balls, one red Powerball — and the same numbers on your ticket get a second chance to win.

The prizing is different from the standard Powerball prizing, however.

There is no progressive jackpot, no chance to win billions, or even hundreds of millions. A perfect six-for-six ticket wins a fixed prize of $10 million — but a winner doesn’t have to split that amount if there are other winners around the country.

Other prizes range from $7 for just pairing the red Powerball, to $50,000 for four white balls and the Powerball, to $500,000 for five white balls but no Powerball.

There is no multiplier option for the Double Play drawing. The prize amounts are fixed, regardless of whether a customer also purchased the Power Play.

The odds of winning $10 million are the same as the odds of winning the regular Powerball jackpot: 1-in-292-million.