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2 winners in $636M Mega Millions drawing

DES MOINES, Iowa — Lottery officials say winning ticket tickets have been sold in California and Georgia for the $636 million Mega Millions jackpot, the second-largest lottery prize in U.S. history.

The winning numbers were: 8, 14, 17, 20, 39; Mega Ball: 7.

Paula Otto, the Virginia Lottery’s executive director and the lead director of Mega Millions, said that $336 million in tickets were sold for Tuesday drawing — they had projected $319 million.

California Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso said Tuesday night that one ticket was sold at Jennifer’s Gift Shop in San Jose, Calif.

“For us, the main thing we’d like to get across is the level of excitement we saw all across California,” Traverso said. “At one point, we were selling about 25,000 tickets per minute.

“It’s been an amazing experience. It’s unbelievable.”

Otto didn’t know yet where in Georgia the ticket had been sold.

Lottery host John Crow calls the numbers during the lottery drawing for the Mega Millions jackpot, estimated at $636 million, in Atlanta, Georgia December 17, 2013.Reuters/Tami Chappell

The jackpot resets to $15 million for the next drawing, which is on Friday night.

Mega Millions changed its rules in October to help increase the jackpots by lowering the odds of winning the top prize. That means the chances of winning the jackpot are now about 1 in 259 million. It used to be about 1 in 176 million, nearly the same odds of winning a Powerball jackpot.

But that hasn’t stopped aspiring multimillionaires from playing the game.

“Oh, I think there’s absolutely no way I am going to win this lottery,” said Tanya Joosten, 39, an educator at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who bought several tickets Tuesday. “But it’s hard for such a small amount of money to not take the chance.”

Tickets sold for Tuesday’s drawing at a pace that surpassed even the lottery’s expectations, said Otto, who is also executive director of the Virginia Lottery. Otto said officials expected about 70 percent of the possible number combinations to be purchased for Tuesday’s drawing.

The Mega Millions revamp comes about two years after Powerball changed some of its game rules and increased the price of a ticket to $2 and added $1 million and $2 million secondary prizes. Mega Millions remains $1, and an extra $1 option has been expanded to allow up to $5 million as a secondary prize.

The changes in both games were aimed at creating bigger and faster growing jackpots. So far, it looks like it’s working.

Mega Millions is played in 43 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.