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At some point, whether it’s Friday night or down the road, someone will win the Mega Millions award.
It probably won’t be you.
With odds stacked against players matching the six numbers needed to hit the mother, the maximum prize in the lottery game has reached the estimated $ 970 million for Friday night’s draw. The cash option (which most winners choose for an annual income) is $ 716.3 million (before taxes). The prize is also the third largest in U.S. lottery history.
Friday night’s draw will come just days after another lottery game won a lot of money: a ticket purchased in Maryland won the $ 731.1 million Powerball prize ($ 546.8 million) , which holds the sixth largest prize in history.
“We know players love big prizes, and when the numbers are that big, it becomes a national phenomenon,” said Gordon Medenica, Maryland lottery director and chief executive of Mega Millions.
“Everyone wants to dream about what they would do if they won,” Medenica said.
The largest Mega Millions prize has been going up since mid-September, when someone earned $ 120 million ($ 95.4 million in cash) and the maximum prize was reset to $ 20 million. It’s 37 weeks without anyone matching the six numbers in drawings twice a week, marking the longest stretch with no winners, according to lottery officials.
Each Mega Millions ticket has approximately 1 in 302 million chances of winning the prize. For Powerball, it’s a little better: 1 in 292 million.
Even if you buy several tickets, you wouldn’t move the needle much. To give you even a 50-50 chance of winning the Mega Millions prize (i.e. the same odds when you spin a coin once) you would have to buy over 151 million combinations of different numbers. However, you cannot guarantee that you are the only winner.
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In fact, the largest prize in U.S. history (a $ 1.59 million Powerball prize in 2016) was split in three ways.
For the Friday night draw, lottery officials estimate that 40% of all possible number combinations will be played.
Of course, you can win in the game without reaching the prize. The last Mega Millions draw, held Tuesday night, produced about 5.2 million winning tickets, according to lottery data. This included two winners of $ 2 million each, 11 winners of $ 1 million each, and 139 winners who earned at least $ 10,000.
Once the Mega Millions award is won, it will be reset to $ 20 million.