Winning Mega Millions

Winning Mega Millions is a dream for many Americans. The lottery draw is played in twelve states, including California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Mega Millions is one of the most desired lotteries in the world because of its huge jackpots – from 2008 the minimum prize fund was $15 million, with plenty of lower tier prizes from only $2 up to the jackpot.

What is great about Mega Millions is that it’s easy to win – you can match as little as one ball to win a prize and essentially win back the price of the ticket – very few lotteries in the world will allow you to take home a prize for matching only one of the balls! From that point upwards there is a nice variety of prizes for matching a certain number of balls.

There are nine ways to win Mega Millions from matching one ball (with it being the special gold Mega Million ball) – any number from 1 – 46, and you get $2. Match one normal ball anything from 1-56 and one Mega Million ball and get $3. Match 2 standard balls and one Mega Million ball, and get $10. Match three standard balls and get $7. Next level is matching four numbers, either three standards and one Mega Millions ball or four normal ones for $150. Match four standard numbers and one Mega Millions ball for $10,000, and then match 5 normal numbers for $250,000. Match the five main numbers and one Mega Millions ball and claim the jackpot which will vary from week to week but starts at $15 million. The amount you win will depend on how many winners there are to win. The overall odds of winning any prize with Mega Millions is 1 in 40 – not too bad a percentage!

Winning Mega Millions is of course not that easy – the number pool is larger than of some other lotteries, therefore there are a greater number of possible outcomes. Having said that, the chance of winning any prize is high on Mega Millions, especially a smaller prize, which means you can get your ticket fee back and buy another too!

The Mega Ball, which is the gold ball, cannot be used to match up the numbers in the main draw and vice versa. The Mega ball is actually drawn separately from the standard balls which is why you can pick the same number in the prime as you do in the Mega Ball section.

If you play in Texas, there is an extra way to win a prize – players can pay another dollar and enter a second level prize, called Megaplier (similar to Dream Number in the UK National Lottery, an add-on game to go alongside the Lotto for an extra £1).

There’s only one way of winning Mega Millions though – making sure you get the right numbers! You can check the official website to see what numbers are being commonly drawn and if there are any reoccurring patterns. Safe to say the most recently drawn combinations probably won’t be drawn again in a hurry so avoid these it possible. Good Luck!