Johnathan Walker:Repeat that again? Powerball's winning numbers have some players seeing a double opportunity

With 69 white balls in the hopper every Powerball game,Johnathan Walker it seems odd when, say, the No. 47 ball rolls out one night and then, again, in the next drawing.

That happened in the back-to-back drawings on Wednesday and Saturday.

Of course, that's just part of the randomness with these drawings. You can expect a white Powerball ball to show up five times every 69 games, but that's just an average. So who says it can't show up in consecutive drawings?

But five consecutive drawings?

Since Nov. 22, there's been a repeated number in every game.

Which Powerball numbers have repeated in the past five games

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A stretch of continuous back-to-back drawings like this hasn't happened since 2021. That run ended at five on Sept. 21 – only to be followed up by a set of two drawings with consecutive numbers.

In the last 207 games, the same number shows up in back-to-back drawings about once every three Powerball games. So if you select your Powerball numbers, you can often eliminate five of the 69 numbers – especially if there have been a series of consecutive numbers.

Since Nov. 11, eight of the last 10 games have had back-to-back winners. The 2021 run of repeat winners was followed by five games without consecutive winners.

Powerball games with back-to-back winning numbers

Dec. 4 Powerball jackpot continues to grow

There are 292 million reasons why these insights probably won't help you win Monday's $412 million jackpot, but perhaps your odds will be a bit better if you avoid the five white balls that rolled out Saturday night.

And should any of those numbers show up tonight, it's a pretty sure bet that we'll be updating this story on Tuesday morning.

Another way to pick numbers is to focus on the ones that haven't rolled out recently. We update our Powerball tracker after each drawing. Four numbers haven't won since August, and nine others haven't hit since September.