The Mega Millions lottery jackpot climbed to $290 million Friday -- its largest amount since March 2011.
The lucky winning numbers are: 6 - 17 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 20.
Lucky Retailers List | Mega Millions Jackpot History
At a convenience store in Anaheim, several customers were buying tickets just after the store opened at 6 a.m. Tickets will be sold until 7:45 p.m for Friday's draw, which will be just before 8 p.m.
The store expects to sell about 6,000 tickets Friday. That's up from the daily average of about 3,000 tickets this week.
No tickets with all six numbers have been sold since the Jan. 24 drawing -- that was 16 drawings ago.
The odds of matching all five numbers and the Mega number is 1 in 175,711,536, which seems even more daunting when said out loud.
So what's the best strategy for picking numbers?
If you're not the type of person who likes to share, avoid numbers that are selected often -- such as numbers lower than 32. Lottery players frequently choose the date of their birthdays as one of their numbers, so numbers higher than 31 would be played less, USC mathematics professor Ken Alexander told City News Service.
You can test the frequency of numbers with California Lottery's Number Frequency tool, which shows how often various numbers were randomly selected in Mega Million draws.
Buying tickets at a store on the lottery website's Lucky Retailers list -- the stores that have sold winning tickets -- won't help either.
"The chance that a given place will sell a winning lottery ticket is just related to how many tickets they sell,'' Alexander said.
Or, try Rick Foster's approach.
"Wait til about 8:01 then toss my losing ticket in the trash," he wrote on the NBCLA Facebook page.
Do you use a strategy when it comes to picking lottery numbers? Let us know on our Facebook page.
Below, a list of Mega Millions jackpot winners from California.
- Nov. 1, 2011 - $78 million won by Charles Hairston of Paso Robles
- Sept. 30, 2011 - $113 million jackpot - 2 winning tickets ($56.5 million each): Group of 6 people from Los Angeles
- May 3, 2011 - $51 million won by Ronnie Orender of Bakersfield
- Aug. 27, 2010 - $135 million won by John Davis in Morro Bay
- July 16, 2010 - $64 million jackpot won by Zahra Vasseghi of Agoura Hills, CA and Thu Thao Truong of El Monte
- May 4, 2010 - $266 million jackpot won by Gilbert and Jackie Cisneros in Pico Rivera
- March 5, 2010 - $134 million won by John Dalkos in Long Beach
- Nov. 10, 2009 - $77 million jackpot - 2 winning tickets ($38.5 million each): Lourdes Salinas in South San Francisco
- Aug. 28, 2009 - $336 million jackpot - 2 winning tickets ($168 million each): Kevyn Ogawa in San Gabriel
- May 15, 2009 - $38 million jackpot - 2 winning tickets ($19 million each): Natalio Perez of Santa Ana
- May 1, 2009 - $227 million jackpot - 3 winning tickets ($75.6 million each): Anneliese Hansen and Brian Cabaud of Mill Valley
- Jan. 2, 2009 - $47 million won by Todd Mointz of San Diego
- May 11, 2007 - $113 million - Cynthia Stafford, Robert Stafford and Robert Stafford Jr. in Hawthorne
- Sept. 21, 2007 - $61 million - Zorina Kroop, Studio City
- June 16, 2006 - $35 million - Thomas Thornton in La Quinta
- Nov. 15, 2005 - $315 million - Seven winners: Bob Guerzon, Jennifer Habib, Brenda Heller, Kate Juergens, Joyce Onori, Mariza Cuya and Kathleen Jones in Anaheim
- Nov. 29, 2005 - $35 million - 2 winning tickets ($17.5 million each): Maria & Pedro Meza, ticket purchased in Wilmington
- Dec. 30, 2005 $88 million - Virginia & Victor Andujo of Montebello
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