Vast numbers of Americans will be tuning in or going online Wednesday night to find out if they’re about to become as rich as King Solomon.

The Powerball jackpot is already the largest offered by any lottery, anywhere, ever. As of Tuesday night, the nominal size was $1.5 billion and the present cash value $930 million. By the time of Wednesday’s drawing, as millions more pour in through ticket sales, it’ll be even higher.

Lottery tickets, by definition, are mostly losing bets.

But the skyrocketing Powerball jackpot is making this a $2 flutter that makes some sense.

Do the math.

There are 292 million possible winning numbers and each ticket costs $2. So if you spent $584 million, you could cover every possible winning number and be sure of winning. Furthermore, your other tickets would also bring in about $46 million worth of other prizes, ranging from lots of $4 payouts to several checks of $1 million. In total, you’re looking at $1 billion in prize money.

So is this a winning bet? Not necessarily. You may end sharing that jackpot with two, three or even more people, which means you’d only get back a few hundred million instead of a billion for your $584 million outlay.

Read:The $1.5 billion Powerball is everything that’s wrong with America

Oh, yes, and the winnings are taxable too.

But here are three things to bear in mind.

1. Yes, the people lining up to buy tickets due to the skyrocketing jackpot are being rational. It’s a harmless, fun bet. And the tickets are worth more when the prize is this big.

2. The value of the smaller prizes works out to around 40 cents a ticket.

3. Wall Street could guarantee a profit out of Powerball by issuing high-yield junk bonds and purchasing 292 million tickets. If the venture won the jackpot outright, it would pay off the bonds and pocket around $300 million. If it had to share the jackpot, and so made a loss, it would just default on the bonds. You think I’m kidding? I just explained the math of pretty much every hedge fund — plus Donald Trump’s bankrupt casino ventures in Atlantic City.

See:Taxes on a Powerball jackpot could be more than $400 million