Since the last Mega Millions drawing on Dec. 13, the pot total has jumped to a whopping $586 million on Monday morning, with expectations for it to grow larger as more tickets are sold before Tuesday's drawing, according to CNN.
Mega Millions, a lottery that is 17-years-old and has sold over 29 billion tickets since its inception, may rise to $1 billion dollars if no one wins by Christmas, setting the record for the biggest pot amount so far.
After the Dec. 13 drawing, which reached $425 million, the pot jumped to $550. Now with the amount at $586 billion, the cash payout could be around $316 million, according to CNN.
Since a modification to the lottery in October lowered the chances of winning to 1 in 259 million opposed to the previous 1 in 176 million odds, a person has a better chance of getting hit by an asteroid than winning, but that doesn't seem to keep people from buying the one dollar ticket, CNN reported.
The largest recorded amount awarded was $656 million in 2012, but those numbers could be topped by the end of 2013 if nobody plays the winning numbers on Tuesday.
Other changes brought on by the October modifcations is that lottery players can choose five numbers ranging from one to 75, compared to the previous range of one to 56, CNN reported. This change also has an effect on the probability of winning numbers being chosen; not one person has won since the changes were put into effect.
Paula Otto, the executive director of the Virginia Lottery and Mega Millions' lead director, said ticket sales are beyond predicted amounts and that is the main factor to the growing lottery amount, which will likely be raised before Tuesday's numbers are drawn, Time magazine reported.
Otto also said the probability the winning number combination will be drawn on Tuesday are between 65 and 75 percent of the 259 million combinations possible, according to Time.
