The largest Mega Millions jackpot ever is up for grabs Tuesday night.
The odds of winning are slim, less than 1 in 302 million, but if someone lucks out, they’ll wake up more than $1.5 billion richer — at least, before taxes.
The reason the jackpot grew so big is no one has matched all the necessary numbers going back to mid April, but that’s all due to change Tuesday night, according to customers who bought their tickets from Crescent Wine and Spirits in Bowie, Maryland.
“Of course, everybody thinks they have the winning ticket, but I know I have it,” said one woman, who chose to stay anonymous because of the windfall she’s expecting in her bank account. She vowed most people will never know she won.
“My neighbors will probably find out when I start doing things to the house,” she said. “I mind my own business, I expect them to mind their own business,” she added with a laugh.
The other four biggest Mega Millions jackpots were all won by a single ticket, but apparently that won’t be the case with tonight’s drawing, since Ralph Daniel told WTOP that he, too, has bought a winning ticket — and just minutes after the anonymous woman had done so.
“I’ve had a lot of success at this particular establishment on buying lottery tickets, so I feel real lucky,” said Daniel.
Pretty much everyone who bought a ticket Tuesday morning let the computer draw the numbers for them.
“I couldn’t even fill out one of those cards if you asked me to,” joked Kyle Owen, who left the store with a pocketful of tickets. “You’ve got to play to win, so you might as well try.”
When asked how lucky he was feeling, he answered with a laugh: “Not very.”
According to TEGNA, which owns numerous TV stations around the country including WUSA9, the numbers that have been drawn the most in recent years are 10 and 14 (55 times each) followed by 3, 17, and 46 (54 times each). The number 8 has been drawn 53 times.
The Mega Bill drawn the most over the last six years was the number 22, which has come up 34 times, followed by the number 11, drawn 31 times.
But past performance isn’t indicative of future results, and with random numbers getting drawn, your set of lucky numbers is no more or less likely to get picked than the random combination spit out by the computer, no matter what your gut tells you.
The odds of that happening are, again, 1 in about 302.6 million. According to the research firm Marketschain, you have better odds of living to 100 (1 in 5,000), getting struck by lightning (1 in 15,300), becoming a self-made billionaire (1 in 674,012), getting eaten by a shark (1 in 4.3 million) or dying in a tornado (1 in 5.7 million) than waking up $1.55 billion richer tomorrow.
As Jim Carrey’s character said in the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”
Why not?
“I’m due,” said Dennis Schnake, who said he’s won a few bucks playing the lottery here and there, but nothing big. “I’m due. I’ve been playing this s*** for 50 years.”
