The eighth-largest U.S. lottery jackpot will be at stake in Tuesday evening's multi-state Mega Millions lottery draw.
With no tickets with all six numbers sold for 30 consecutive drawings, the jackpot has grown to $1.1 billion, the fifth-largest in the history of the Mega Millions game, which began in 1996 as The Big Game and was given the new name Mega Millions in 2002. There have been three Powerball drawings with larger jackpots.
The odds of matching all five numbers and the Mega number are 1 in 302,575,350, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association. The overall chance of winning a prize is 1 in 24.
Buying tickets at a store where tickets with large jackpots have been sold in the past will not increase a purchaser's chance of winning a jackpot, according to USC mathematics professor Ken Alexander.
"The chance that a given place will sell a winning lottery ticket is just related to how many tickets they sell," Alexander told City News Service.
However, players wanting a better chance of avoiding sharing the jackpot should choose numbers that aren't selected as often, Alexander said. Lottery players frequently choose the date of their birthdays as one of their numbers, so numbers higher than 31 would be played less, Alexander said.
The deadline to buy tickets is 7:45 p.m. The drawing will be conducted at 8 p.m.
The Mega Millions game is played in 45 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. Virgin Islands.
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