Mega Millions' August 8 $1.55 billion jackpot drawing is the largest in its history as players flock to buy tickets

The Mega Millions jackpot for the Tuesday night draw has soared to $1.55billion - the largest in its history.

It comes after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn on Friday night. There has now not been a Mega Millions jackpot winner for nearly four months, since April 18.

Tuesday night's jackpot could also be the third-largest overall in US lottery history. 

The winner of the ticket would have the option of claiming a single lump sum of around $757.2million, or opting to claim the full prize in 29 annual payments. 

The $1.55billion prize is just larger than the $1.537billion Mega Millions win in South Carolina in October 2018, according to lottery officials.

The Mega Millions jackpot for the Tuesday night draw has soared to $1.55billion - the largest in its history

Steven Tallant, 74, buys three Mega Millions lottery tickets at a gas station in Minneapolis on  August 7

The odds of winning tonight's Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 302.6million. Those odds are worse than the 1 in 11.5million odds of being bitten by a shark or the 1 in 700,000 odds of giving birth to identical quadruplets. 

One lottery ticket vendor in Ohio told Spectrum News 1 the unprecedented jackpot had caused sales to more than quadruple.

'They spend a lot of money right now because of the highest amount,' said Mohamad Ramzeen, owner of Madison Quickstop.

'When the lotteries go up, especially the Powerball and Mega, people are playing a lot,' Ramzeen said. 'So everyone's trying. Everyone needs money, right?' 

Mark Glickman, a senior statistics lecturer at Harvard, told CBS News that although nothing can be done to increase the outright chances of winning the jackpot, measures can be taken to maximize the size of winnings in case you win.

'Even though you cannot on a single drawing improve your chances, what you can do is invoke a strategy that actually increases your chance of not sharing your prize fund,' said Glickman.

'Rather than picking common numbers or patterns on tickets, what you should actually be doing is you should be taking random numbers,' he said.

'You should just completely have pattern-less random numbers, no birthdays that have special meaning to you, because other people are likely to make those same picks,' he said.

One lottery ticket vendor reported ticket sales of Mega Millions tickets had quadrupled thanks to the large jackpot

Although in recent months there have been no Mega Millions jackpot winners, the year started off win a number of wins.

'This year started out with six jackpot winners in less than four months - a number far more typical of a full year and indicative of the truly random nature of lottery drawings,' the lottery said.

There have been a string of recent billion dollar lotto winners, including two separate billion dollar Powerball winning tickets sold in California.

A single ticket matched all six numbers drawn on July 19 - that meant someone had won the third-highest ever prize for the multi-state lottery.

Although the winner is known, lottery officials confirmed the winning ticket was sold by a Los Angeles convenience store just blocks from the homeless encampments of Skid Row.

California Lottery officials previously confirmed Las Palmitas Mini Market as the store where the winning ticket was sold. Its owner, Nabor Herrera, will also receive a $1 million bonus from Powerball. 

Herrera said he did not realize he'd sold the winning ticket until he arrived for work early Thursday and saw cameras camped out in front of the shop, which he initially though were for a movie scene.

'I tell you, it's a surprise for me, I didn't know what it is - filming or what,' the father of four told KTLA-TV.

And it was the second time in less than a year someone from California had struck gold. In February, Edwin Castro came forward to claim the winnings from November's $2.04billion drawing. He opted take the lump sum of $997.6million.

Edwin Castro, 31, pictured outside of an office building in the Pasadena section of Los Angeles 

But the 31-year-old's ownership of the winning ticket is being challenged by a man named Jose Rivera who says that his landlord, Urachi Romero, stole it from him and attempted to blackmail him in exchange for returning it. 

When Rivera refused to bow to the blackmail, he says that Castro took the winnings.

Rivera has not said how Castro came into possession of the ticket. Romero has supported his former tenant's claims.

Mega Millions tickets, which are $2 each, are sold in all states except Alabama, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Nevada.

The $1.55billion Mega Millions drawing will happen at 11pm ET.