Mega Millions drawings are held Tuesday and Friday at 11:00 pm ET. Five white balls are drawn from a set of balls numbered 1 through 70; one gold Mega Ball is drawn from a set of balls numbered 1 through 25. You win if the numbers on one row of your ticket match the numbers of the balls drawn on that date. Powerball jackpot jumps to $363 million, Mega Millions' top prize is $376 million. How winners can protect their windfall Published Sat, Dec 26 2020 9:51 AM EST Updated Sun, Dec 27 2020 8:26 AM EST.

Last updated on December 20, 2020

To win the U.S. Mega Millions, players must choose five numbers from 1 to 70 and one Mega Ball from 1 to 25. Mega Millions was previously a 5/75 game, so various changes have taken place since then. Perhaps, the most exciting change is the increase in jackpot prize from $15 million to $40 million.

However, the government will not introduce changes to make the game much easier to win. So, let’s talk about how the current format of the U.S. Mega Millions affects your odds of winning the jackpot prize from a mathematical perspective.

The Odds Of The US Mega Millions 5/70

The current Mega Millions’ 5/70 game format can have a total of 12,103,014 playable combinations. Therefore, your odds of matching five correct numbers is 1 in 12 million chances. But to win the jackpot prize, you have to match the extra mega ball too by choosing a number between 1 to 25. This requirement pushes the odds to a monumental one on 302.5 million chances.

The odds can mean both good news and bad news.

First of all, the bad news:

With its current format of 5/70, winning the main jackpot prize is harder than ever. The odds before was 1 to 259 million. But now, it’s 1 to 302.6 million.

In plain English, you have to play 303 million times to win the jackpot when you used to have 260 million attempts in the old format. Of course, the odds from the old and the current are both terrible. The current one is just the worst in the history of Mega Millions.

Then, the good news:

It is much easier now to win a five number match without the mega ball. In the old format, the odds for the second-tier prize was 1 to 18 million. Now, with the 5/70, it’s 1 to 12.6 million.

So to win the second prize division, you only need to attempt 13 million times as opposed to 18 million. That’s a big improvement. Right? Well, not quite. Although we recognize that there’s a significant difference, the odds are still monumental.

The promise of a minimum $40 million jackpot sounds fair enough with the current rules. But whether that is good news or bad news is up to you, depending on your objective.

Either way, I recommend that you play the U.S. Mega Millions with the right type of combinations.

Let me introduce some of these number patterns for the new U.S. Mega Millions 5/70 game below:

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Odd-Even Number Patterns in Mega Millions 5/70

Pattern	Possible Combinations	Probability
5-odd-and-0-even	324632	0.026822409690677
4-odd-and-1-even	1832600	0.15141682889898
3-odd-and-2-even	3894275	0.32176076141034
2-odd-and-3-even	3894275	0.32176076141034
1-odd-and-4-even	1832600	0.15141682889898
0-odd-and-5-even	324632	0.026822409690677
12103014	1

Further, we can classify these odd-even patterns into three groups:

Best Group	Middle Group	Worst Group
3-odd-2-even	4-odd-1-even	5-even-0-odd (All even numbers)
2-odd-3-even	1-odd-4-even	5-odd-0-even (All odd numbers)

Clearly, the table above shows that the 3-odd-2-even and the 2-odd-3-even number patterns put you in a better position to win.

As you can see, the “all-even-number” pattern appears three times in every 100 draws. Whereas, the 3-odd-2-even appears approximately 32 times. The difference in probability is so apparent and self-explanatory.

Therefore, the statement that each number combination has equal chances of getting drawn in the lottery is a mistake. The table above can attest to that. See my post: Top 10 Lottery Strategy Myths Debunked.

So, if you play the U.S. Mega Millions 5/70 game, you don’t want to waste your money on poor combinations. (See my post Lottery Wheel Versus Number Pattern)

Testing Probability Against the Actual U.S. Mega Millions 5/70 Results

At the time of writing, there were only 237 draws to analyze as of February 2020. Even with that limited number of draws, we can say it’s big enough to come up with a conclusive comparison between the actual graph and theoretical graph.

The probability analysis we have done with other lotteries show substantial evidence that theoretical calculation and actual results both agree together. This fact holds with the Mega Millions and other lottery games. That is the power of logical reasoning using the probability theory. Math remains a powerful guide on how to win the Mega Millions.

Below are the graphs we have prepared to show the agreement between probability prediction and actual Mega Millions draws. The data were from October 31, 2017, to February 4, 2020, which composed of all the winning numbers from 237 draws:

Mega Millions 5/70 Odd-Even Analysis – Prediction Versus Actual Results

Mega Millions 5/70 Low-High Analysis – Prediction Versus Actual Results

Here’s a little task you can do:

Jackpot Analysis Powerball

Together, let’s watch the outcome of the U.S. Mega Millions for the next 1000 draws. You tally the odd-even patterns from the actual results. After you reach the 1000 draws, go back to this article and compare the table with the tally of your own. I’ll bet you will believe with your own eyes that math never fails.

Our probability analysis of the old U.S. Mega Millions 5/75 format is solid proof that math works.

How to compute the expected frequency of each pattern in 1000 draws?

The expected frequency is computed by multiplying the Probability by 1000 draws.

Expected Frequency = Probability x 1000 draws

In the case of 3-odd-and-2-even patterns with the probability of 0.32176076141034, the expected frequency will be 322.

Following the same computation for the rest of the patterns, we will arrive at the complete prediction table below:

Likely Results Of the U.S. Mega Millions for Odd/Even Number Patterns in the Next 1000 Draws

Pattern	Probability	Expected frequency in 1000 draws
5-odd-and-0-even	0.026822409690677	27
4-odd-and-1-even	0.15141682889898	151
3-odd-and-2-even	0.32176076141034	322
2-odd-and-3-even	0.32176076141034	322
1-odd-and-4-even	0.15141682889898	151
0-odd-and-5-even	0.026822409690677	27

Can you see the difference?

Mega Millions Jackpot Analysis