Powerball jackpot hits $1B: Expert talks best practices when choosing lottery numbers

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- There are just a few more hours until the $1 billion Powerball drawing.

This is only the seventh time a jackpot in the United States has reached at least $1 billion.

The lump sum payout is $518 million, if you'd prefer to collect your winnings all at once.

We spoke to a lottery expert about some strategies when it comes to choosing numbers.

RELATED: Everything to know for the next Powerball drawing as jackpot hits $1 billion

"You kind of want to use the entire play slip and spread your numbers out," said Jared James, founder of Lottoedge.com. "We also found, which is kind of interesting, a pretty significant amount of the time we found that the perfect mix is about three even and two odd or three odd and two even. So, really kind of a good balance of even and odd numbers. And that came out about 64% of the time we saw that kind of mix come out on both Powerball and Mega Millions."

The odds of hitting the jackpot are about 1:292 million.

You are more likely to get struck by lightning at some point in your life -- those are odds are about 1:15,000.

Watch the full interview in the player above.

If you're on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live