Nineteen people from the tool and die department at TG Kentucky, part of the automotive supplier Toyoda Gosei Group, have an office pool with one rule: it only runs when the Powerball jackpot reaches $800 million. For several years, each member has paid in when that happens and coworkers have bought the tickets.
In December 2025 the jackpot climbed past the line. For the drawing of Monday, December 8, the group’s ticket, bought at Country Convenient in Lebanon, Kentucky, matched four of the five white balls and the Powerball. The numbers that night were 8, 32, 52, 56 and 64 with a Powerball of 23, and the match was worth $50,000.
What they did
On Friday, December 12, 2025, after work, the nineteen carpooled to Kentucky Lottery headquarters together. They posed in the winner’s lobby with a ceremonial $50,000 check, then each was handed an individual prize of just over $1,800 after taxes, according to the Kentucky Lottery’s announcement, which Powerball republished on December 15, 2025.
Before tax, $50,000 divided 19 ways is $2,631.57 each, with 17 cents left to assign. One member explained the rule plainly: they start pooling when the jackpot gets to $800 million. The group joked that the win was practice for the Saturday drawing, when the jackpot was expected to reach $1 billion.
What went right
Everyone went to the lottery together. Nineteen people in the same lobby, each receiving their own payment from the lottery, is as clean as a group claim gets. Nobody had to trust one person to divide $50,000 at a kitchen table afterward.
Each person got their own payment and their own tax paperwork. When a lottery pays members individually, each person’s tax form shows their share, not the whole prize. IRS Form 5754 does the same job when one person claims for the group; here the Kentucky Lottery handled it at the counter.
The rule was simple and everyone knew it. Eight hundred million is easy to remember and impossible to misunderstand.
The one lesson for your pool
A trigger rule is a good rule with a hidden cost: every time the trigger fires, the pool has to rebuild its roster. Who is in this time? Who paid? Did the new hire join? Was the person on vacation counted? A weekly pool answers those questions by habit. A pool that runs twice a year answers them from scratch, under time pressure, with a jackpot on the news.
A ShareTheWinning pool keeps the pool permanent and makes each drawing its own round. The members stay. When the admin opens a round for the $800 million drawing, everyone is asked to pay in, marks their payment, and the admin confirms it. At the lock the roster for that round freezes. Someone who sat out is simply not in this round’s snapshot; someone who paid is, with the confirmation next to their name. Nothing is left to memory.
And when the prize is $50,000 split 19 ways, the ledger shows each person’s $2,631.57 or $2,631.58, says who got the extra cents and why, and closes when every payment is confirmed.
Read next
How a pool claims a prize explains individual payment, Form 5754 and the one-claimant case. Office pool rules that stop arguments covers the deadline to pay and latecomers. The Journey walks a pool from the latest drawing to a settled round.
