Mega Millions is raffling off $1 billion: how to increase your chances of winning

The prize fund of the Mega Millions lottery is drawn on August 8th. It exceeds $1 billion. What can you do to increase your chances of winning? Yahoo.

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Of course, it all comes down to luck, but you can still try to increase your chances.

The latest Mega Millions jackpot rose to around $1,55 billion, the biggest jackpot in the game's history.

How to increase your chances of winning? Short answer: buy as many tickets as you can within reason. So says Mark Glickman, senior lecturer in statistics at Harvard University.

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"The best thing you can really do is just play many, many times, and that's the only way to increase the odds," Glickman said.

Odds of winning

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are roughly one in 302,5 million. Glickman said that with odds this low, it's better to focus on picking numbers that are completely random. This will help ensure that you don't make the same selections as someone else and that you don't have to share the prize money with anyone if you win.

“You have to have completely unsystematic random numbers,” he said. “No birthdays that have special meaning to you, because other people will likely make the same choice.”

Winnings

No winning tickets were sold in the August 4 Mega Millions draw. The August 8 draw is likely to surpass the largest Mega Millions payout ever. In October 2018, a South Carolina resident won $1,5 billion.

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The non-profit organization Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), which coordinates Mega Millions, turned it into a national game, made it harder to win the jackpot and increased the price of each ticket from $1 to $2.

The new rules gave contestants more numbers to choose from, making it less likely that they would guess the combination needed to win the jackpot. Mega Millions is played in 45 states plus Washington DC and the US Virgin Islands. After the rule change, four Americans have won a Mega Millions jackpot in excess of $1 billion.

Higher ticket prices and lower odds of winning cause the jackpot to rise faster week by week.

The mind-blowing numbers are also encouraging more people to buy tickets, adding to the lottery fund. Americans are 15 times more likely to buy a ticket when the prize pool is close to $1 billion compared to when the prize pool is only $20 million.

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The next draw is set for August 8th at 11pm ET. The winner, if any, will be able to choose from a series of payments over 30 years or a one-time cash award of approximately $757,2 million.

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