Mega number

Many states offer lottery games that award a substantial prize (in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars) to one or more winners. Such games include: Mega Millions, Hot Lotto, and Powerball. For example, Powerball draws five rubber balls that are randomly selected by a machine from a set of 55 balls. Then a sixth number ("Power Ball"; in the other games mentioned above, it is called Mega Ball, or Hot Ball) is drawn, from a different set of 42 numbers. The double matrixes are chosen so that the chance of a random player matching all of the numbers in a single game is, for example, approximately 1:146 million in Powerball. Likewise, it is roughly 1:11 million in Hot Lotto, but 1:176 million in Mega Millions.

Basically, the order in which the numbers are drawn from the machine does not matter, so if a ticket holder has the numbers (in order) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and if the order in which the machine selects these numbers is 5, 2, 4, 3, 1; then the ticket is still a winner. (Pennsylvania Mix & Match, which debuted in January 2007, requires players to choose 5 numbers out of 19; the game is set up so that the order of the numbers drawn matters; Connecticut Mix & Match (no announced starting date) will be played in a similar fashion.) However, in a mega ball game, in order to win the jackpot, the player must match the first five numbers drawn, in any order, but then must also match the number drawn from the second machine exactly. For an in-state game that is offered in California as of September 2008, the first five numbers drawn are from a set of 47 white rubber balls, which are selected by one machine, and the mega number is chosen from a set of 27 purple balls, which is selected by a second machine. The Mega Millions game is similar, but it uses a set of 56 balls for the first five drawn, and another set of 46 for the "Mega Number".