In what’s quickly becoming a quarterly routine, the Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night’s drawing has climbed into the stratosphere. 
 
 California Lottery officials project the jackpot to be around $400 million, just two months after the Mega Millions game produced a $648-million jackpot, and about five months since Powerball last produced a $400-million jackpot. 
 
 The bigger jackpots are drawing more players and excitement to the California Lottery after years of decline. The turnaround is due to changes made to the lottery in 2010, when revenues were falling. The changes brought bigger prizes, but they also altered the formula for how much revenue schools receive. 
 
 California joined Powerball last April and since then, enormous jackpots have become more common. About a month after the state joined the game, a Powerball jackpot climbed to about $600 million, setting a record for the game. 
 
 Officials say that with Powerball’s $2 tickets, jackpots in that game can rise faster with fewer tickets sold than in a game like Mega Millions, which costs $1 per play. 
 
 The odds of winning Wednesday’s big Powerball prize are about 1 in 175 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Assn. For Saturday’s drawing, California sold more than 151,000 winning tickets for smaller prizes ranging from $3 to $5,937, according to the California Lottery. 
 
 If Wednesday’s jackpot rolls over, lottery officials have said past experience suggests Saturday’s draw will offer a prize in excess of $500 million. 
 
 [<a href="//storify.com/latimes/what-would-you-do-with-powerball-winnings" target="_blank">View the story "What would you do with Powerball winnings?" on Storify</a>] 
 
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 Twitter: @MattStevensLAT 
 
 
 
 matt.stevens@latimes.com 
 
 ||||| An Urbandale man has been playing the same set of numbers hoping to win the Powerball jackpot for the last two decades. 
 
 
 
 Lottery officials said Robert Winburn's strategy paid off during Saturday's drawing. 
 
 He won a $1 million prize in the $330.8 million jackpot by matching five of the winning numbers. 
 
 Winburn, 49, said he assigned numbers to the letters of the alphabet and used the corresponding numbers in his last name as his Powerball numbers. Up until this point, the strategy had netted only a $100 prize for Winburn. 
 
 
 
 No one matched all six Powerball numbers on Saturday, which pushed Wednesday's jackpot to an estimated $400 million prize or $227.8 million cash option. 
 
 
 
 Winburn said he learned he won by using a self-check station at an Urbandale Git-N-Go store. 
 
 "I put the first three (tickets) in and no win," Winburn told lottery employees Tuesday. "Then (the winning) one came up. I just kind of glanced at it. I did tell the guy next to me, 'I don't believe this,'"And he leaned over and I did it again and he says, 'Sign it and get the heck out of here.'" 
 
 The odds of winning the $1 million prize is 1 in 5,153,632.65.
– An Iowa man who only won $100 in 19 years of playing the same Powerball numbers has become a millionaire in his 20th year of sticking with them. Rob Winburn won $1 million of Saturday's jackpot by matching five of the numbers, which correspond to numbers he assigned to the letters in his last name, KCCI reports. He had the first five numbers of 2-9-14-21-23, but missed the Powerball number: 3. His odds of winning that $1 million prize were 1 in 5,153,633. When the winning ticket registered as such at a self-check machine the next day, "I did tell the guy next to me, 'I don't believe this,'" Winburn says. "And he leaned over and I did it again and he says, 'Sign it and get the heck out of here.'" He tells WOI-DT that he plans to pay off some bills, buy a new car, and invest the remainder. Nobody won the $330 million jackpot so tonight's jackpot is expected to be around $400 million, and it will top $500 million on Saturday if it rolls over again, the Los Angeles Times notes. (Click to read about another wild lottery win.)