New Year's Eve drawing will be huge
By Todd Northrop
Will an incredibly lucky lottery player end 2010 with a life-changing windfall, or will the first jackpot of 2011 be more than a quarter billion dollars?
We'll find out Friday night, when the $237 million Mega Millions drawing takes place.
Friday's Mega Millions jackpot is the accumulation of 14 consecutive drawings without a top prize winner. The current jackpot run-up started on Nov. 12 as a $12 million grand prize.
The lump-sum cash value stands at a staggering $150.8 million.
Players should note that jackpot amounts are conservative estimates provided by the lotteries, and are often somewhat higher by the time the drawing occurs. Occasionally, as happened this week, the official jackpot estimate is raised even before the drawing, due to larger-than-expected sales.
In last night's Mega Millions drawing, there was no jackpot winner, but 17 lucky players matched the first 5 numbers for a $250,000 prize: 1 from Arizona, 1 from Arkansas, 2 from California, 1 from Connecticut, 1 from Missouri, 2 from New Jersey, 1 from New York, 3 from Ohio, 2 from Pennsylvania, 1 from Texas, 1 from Vermont, and 1 from Virginia.
The two California winners will each be awarded prizes of $597,869, because California awards all prizes in a pari-mutuel formula, which calculates the prize amount based on the number of tickets sold and the number of winners in each prize category. Because only two tickets won second prize despite the large sales volume, the payout is larger then normal for the lucky winners.
Following the Tuesday drawing, the Mega Millions annuity jackpot estimate was raised $37 million from its previous amount of $200 million. The cash value was raised by $23.5 million, from its previous amount of $127.3 million.
The next Mega Millions drawing will take place Friday evening — New Year's Eve — at 11:00 pm Eastern Time.
Mega Millions is currently offered for sale in 41 states, plus Washington, D.C.
For a complete set of game descriptions, results, history, and all questions regarding Mega Millions, lottery players are encouraged to visit USA Mega (www.usamega.com), a Web site that caters to the Unites States's two multi-state lottery games, Powerball and Mega Millions.
The Friday night Mega Millions winning numbers will be published at USA Mega minutes after the drawing takes place.
So ....... now they picked the wrong numbers again ..................
........... and I have to figure out how to spend about $98,000,000 after taxes when I win!
It would really be a Happy New Year with a win on Friday!
What a great way to bring in the New Year.
Wish I culd play here in FL!
Oh ............ and ............... one ticket with one winner!
It seems that one regular lottery player will walk away with $ 237 Millions! But this attract one question:
What is the highest amount of jackpot money won by a lottery player who play's the Mega Millions?
can anyone answer my question?
N/B if your not sure of the answer pls do not reply to this post.
Hang on, I hear you will be able to play next week in Florida.
Where did you hear that?
I hope somebody wins the Mega Millions Jackpot in this upcoming draw.
maybe someone in kansas will finally win the jackpot, i will be buying my ticket and hopeing for a small town girl (me) to win the jackpot.
DREAMS DO COME TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read it actually. Wikipedia had an article about PowerBall in which there was a chart showing PowerBall was in Florida in 2009 and MegaMillion is scheduled to start January 5,2011.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerball
the current cash jackpot record is
$233,000,000 cash , this is what it was 1 draw before that , $164,000,000 cash
see how fast it can fly up in 1 draw at these levels LOL
our current 150m would need 2 more rollovers to set the new world record for the cash jackpot,
when its this high, it does not rain, it pours
if it rolls, and the public see 300m plus Annuity all bets are off, gl guesting the amount ,
, hell, news outlets already starting story's on it
on a side note, Florida is scheduled to start January 5,2011.? i call bs, nonething on google new search's about it, florida not even marketing it!
besides, its a know fact people make up stuff on wiki LOL,i dont trust that site, anyone can make up any thing,
even if true, boy does it suck for you florida, the 5th, hell, if it gets to the drawing on the 4th, that would be new RECORD setting jackpot , its a know fact, once a jackpot hits a world record, the kiss of death is on it, no fing way will it roll anymore
where talking the chances of that not being won, near 10% to 1% lol , we be covering a 400m cash jackpot if it rolls 3 times,not just 2 times, it can happen but not 3 more, if i rolls to the 7th, ever state lottery office will be throwing party's with money covering the floors as they roll in it , it be That much money for them
Oh. Maybe that's right, maybe it isn't. Whoever updates Wikipedia gets it right only sometimes. They post a lot of stuff with absolutely no proof or attribution, and remove the stuff that doesn't pan out.
I'm not a big fan of Wikipedia because of that. I would much rather read information that has a source. The Lottery Wikipedia topic is just "some guy" who decides to write about the lottery -- not a definitive source.
$107 million here after taxes WOW!!! Spend ,Spend,Spend.Party Party Party if i WIN!!!!
!
Well, I don't know who edited that Wikipedia article but it is not correct. I live here in Florida and the Florida Lottery has done no advertising that it will add Mega Millions on January 5, 2011 which is just next week. Hopefully Florida will add Mega Millions but the odds of winning will get worse, the more states that join the MUSL then they change the odds and with Florida being such a populous state and heavy lottery state it will change Mega Millions odds of winning drastically
I went to Florida website and there's no mention of adding MegaMillons so it's likely the article is incorrect. When Ohio added PowerBall, it had a flashy notice about it a couple of weeks before it actually started.
When MegaMillions went from 13 states to 40 states the matrix didn't change so the odds of winning didn't change and yet its jackpots are getting as high as they ever did. The only effects of adding more states have been more winners with jackpots climbing faster. Adding Florida would just make the jackpots climb even faster.
I guess that's pretty much true. Here's the number of jackpot wins for Mega Millions by year:
I dont think the jackpots is getting higher than ever, considering that it have not reached 300 million since the addition of the other states.
We don't need Mega-Millions we got Powerball they had a choice and went with Powerball it doesn't make sense too have 2 mega jackpot games competing against each other like that FL has PowerBall,FL Lotto,Mega-Money and Fantasy 5 that's more than enough JACKPOT games for us here.
Well when Florida added Powerball, the matrix changed, so I assumed that MM would do the same. If they add MM to Florida w/o changing the odds that would be great!!!
I wouldn't expect the jackpots to get higher unless the matrix changed which would also change the odds of winning it. My point was the jackpots were getting as high as they ever did with a 5/56+1/46 matrix regardless of the number of states added.
Yeah it would but I don't really play Power Ball or FL Lottery I'm only interested in Mega-Money,Fantasy 5 ,GA Win For Life and Play 4
How things been looking in 2010 the grass have been much greener playing in N.Y. ODDS tend to fold in that direction!
Well, I'm assumming that most people who win the lottery in NY are actually residents of NY City and not NY state. With such a humongous population that NY City has(larger than any other city is the USA), I'm never surprised with the amount of winners NY City has. There must be more lottery terminals per square foot in NY City than anywhere else in the USA.
N.Y. have a lot of QP jackpot winners i understand they have the majority of players, how is they machines keep spitting out winners. Its not like they are picking their own numbers all the time.
NY Lottery also has the only "sort of famous" lottery spokesperson : Yolanda Vega!
I thank all you people for playing the mega and bringing it up to over 200 million. But I will take this money on Friday. But don't worry I will give some back to the communities.