Who wants to be a billionaire?
Here we go again, another lottery in the United States is at astronomical levels. Nobody won the Mega Millions jackpot Tuesday night, meaning the top prize for Friday’s upcoming draw is an estimated $1.35 billion. And yes, like you, I will be buying a ticket because, you know, now it’s finally “worth it,” as if it wasn’t when it was at $200 million.
Assuming the jackpot hits the estimated figure, it would make it the fourth-largest in United States lottery history. The richest drawing of all time came just this past November, when an extremely lucky person in California hit it big in the Powerball multi-state lottery for $2.04 billion (annuity value – the cash value, if taken immediately, was $997.6 million).
The second largest jackpot in history was also Powerball, hit in January 2016 by three people for a total of $1.586 billion. The third largest, a Mega Millions drawing, was won by a single person in October 2018 for $1.537 billion.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about nobody matching all six numbers on Tuesday night was that the numbers were all below 20: 7, 13, 14, 15, 18 and a Mega Ball of 9. People tend to pick numbers that correspond to significant dates like birthdays and anniversaries, which would all fall in the range of what popped up last night; that nobody had the magical combination really surprises me.
This is also why it is wise to have at least one number above 31. Because people’s self-selected numbers will be dates more often than not, having a number outside of the possible date range makes it less likely that you will end up with the same numbers as someone else and thus split the jackpot if you win.
Then again, don’t think too hard about it. None of us are going to win. But be sure you pick strategically so as not to split the prize and only win hundreds of millions of dollars.
There were five tickets last night that got all the white balls correct, which brings with it a prize of at least $1 million. If any of those people paid extra for the “megaplier,” they will win $3 million. I’m not going to say I would rather not win anything than miss out on a billion dollars because I got one number wrong, but boy, would that be a difficult million to swallow.
Almost, but not quite
When I was a kid, my family had three close calls with sweet prizes. Back when all six ping pong balls came from the same number pool (there was no “yellow” Mega Ball), my dad got four numbers right and missed the other two by one. I think he won a hundred bucks or something.
The second instance came when my family took a trip to Disney World. Going through the turnstiles, we received a ticket that granted us a prize, usually something worthless like a sticker. One day, we were in a line that wasn’t moving, so we moved to the adjacent line. The people who moved up into our spot in the first line won a car.
Then, when my dad was out of town on a business trip, a local radio station called his birthday for $10,000. I thought about calling and pretending I was him, but I was too nervous that they would figure out my ruse.
