Powerball Jackpot is Up to $550 Million

WalletPop Editor

The odds of winning tonight's insanely huge Powerball lottery in the U.S. are about 1 in 175,000,000. For perspective, a person is more likely to birth identical quadruplets, become president of the United States, drown in a bathtub or find a four-leaf clover than score a winning ticket. But that doesn't stop pundits from weighing in and trying to help would-be lottery winners try to figure out how to increase their chances.

One of those winners, a seven-time winner named Robert Lustig, believes he has the answer. In a nutshell, here are his tips for boosting your odds of winning (via WPTV):

Pick your own numbers instead of having the machine do it for you
Research and see if your numbers have won before
Select your ten sets of numbers and keep those if you continue buying tickets
Buy as many tickets as you can afford

Canadians have never had a lottery as massive as Powerball - and that might be a good thing. But we do have to deal with the weekly temptations of Lotto Max and Lotto 649, the former rising to 50-million dollar heights. Here's a bunch of weird facts that we found about our own lottery lore: