 Many states have set up lottery games that award a substantial prize, often in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to some lucky winner or group of winners. Such games often go by the name of Mega Millions, Hot Lotto, or 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).
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 last number drawn exactly. For an in-state game that is offered in California as of June 2007, 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 as just one ball 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 final ball, known as the mega number.
Pennsylvania Mix & Match
Mix & Match is game that involves selecting five numbers from 1 to 19, as well as the order that they will be drawn. There are two ways to win: one for matching three or more numbers in any order ("mixing"), and the other for matching at least one number in its correct position ("matching"). The jackpot starts at $50,000 (lump sum), and is won by matching all 5 numbers in the order they are drawn. The price of one play is $2. Mix & Match is drawn during the live nighttime televised drawings Mondays and Thursdays at 6:58:50 PM Eastern Time.
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