'I nearly had a heart attack!' Virginia woman wins the lottery 30 TIMES in just one day after buying 30 Pick 4 tickets that netted her $150,000
https://www.theroot.com/virginia-woman-makes-ludicrous-amount-of-money-moves-w-1833206099
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6791927/Virginia-woman-wins-lottery-30-times-one-day.html
Deborah Brown kept seeing four numbers everywhere one day last month, so she decided to do something about it.
On Feb. 11, Ms. Brown, who lives in Richmond, Va., bought 30 Pick 4 lottery tickets, each for a dollar. She told the vendor she wanted every ticket with the same set of numbers in this sequence: 1-0-3-1.
The Virginia Lottery Pick 4 winning numbers were drawn that night and they delivered: They matched Ms. Brown’s.
If she had purchased just one ticket, it would have paid $5,000. But with 30, each was a winner, so she reaped $150,000, the lottery organization announced on Friday.
“A couple of times during the day, I saw those numbers,” she said in a statement released through Virginia Lottery. When she saw all the tickets were winners, she said, “I nearly had a heart attack!”
Ms. Brown said she bought 20 tickets at first, and then because she had a “feeling” the numbers were lucky, she bought 10 more, the statement said.
Ms. Brown could not be reached on Monday. In the statement, she said that she had no immediate plans for her winnings, but that she was considering renovating her home.
In Pick 4, the odds of matching all four numbers in order are 1 in 10,000, John Hagerty, a spokesman for Virginia Lottery, said on Monday.
By comparison, the odds of being struck by lightning in an 80-year lifetime are 1 in 14,600, according to the National Weather Service.
Buying more than one ticket with the same series of numbers does not improve the chance of winning because only one series can win in each drawing. It does increase the payout, however, because each winning ticket is worth $5,000, Mr. Hagerty said.
He said that Ms. Brown’s purchase of multiple tickets was not without precedent in the state’s lottery, but that the number of tickets she bought with the same numbers — and their payout — was unusual.
“In general, people who buy multiple tickets will spread the numbers around,” he said. “But we do see people buy multiple tickets with the same numbers in order to increase that prize.”
“And sometimes it works,” he said.
Multiple tickets with the same numbers netted payouts of $100,000 or more three times in 2017, and five times in 2016, he said.
- Deborah Brown, of Richmond, won the lottery 30 times in one day on February 11
- She bought 20 Pick 4 tickets which had the same four digit combination: 1-0-3-1
- Each of her 30 plays won $5,000 top prize, which brought her total to $150,000
https://www.theroot.com/virginia-woman-makes-ludicrous-amount-of-money-moves-w-1833206099
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6791927/Virginia-woman-wins-lottery-30-times-one-day.html
Deborah Brown kept seeing four numbers everywhere one day last month, so she decided to do something about it.
On Feb. 11, Ms. Brown, who lives in Richmond, Va., bought 30 Pick 4 lottery tickets, each for a dollar. She told the vendor she wanted every ticket with the same set of numbers in this sequence: 1-0-3-1.
The Virginia Lottery Pick 4 winning numbers were drawn that night and they delivered: They matched Ms. Brown’s.
If she had purchased just one ticket, it would have paid $5,000. But with 30, each was a winner, so she reaped $150,000, the lottery organization announced on Friday.
“A couple of times during the day, I saw those numbers,” she said in a statement released through Virginia Lottery. When she saw all the tickets were winners, she said, “I nearly had a heart attack!”
Ms. Brown said she bought 20 tickets at first, and then because she had a “feeling” the numbers were lucky, she bought 10 more, the statement said.
Ms. Brown could not be reached on Monday. In the statement, she said that she had no immediate plans for her winnings, but that she was considering renovating her home.
In Pick 4, the odds of matching all four numbers in order are 1 in 10,000, John Hagerty, a spokesman for Virginia Lottery, said on Monday.
By comparison, the odds of being struck by lightning in an 80-year lifetime are 1 in 14,600, according to the National Weather Service.
Buying more than one ticket with the same series of numbers does not improve the chance of winning because only one series can win in each drawing. It does increase the payout, however, because each winning ticket is worth $5,000, Mr. Hagerty said.
He said that Ms. Brown’s purchase of multiple tickets was not without precedent in the state’s lottery, but that the number of tickets she bought with the same numbers — and their payout — was unusual.
“In general, people who buy multiple tickets will spread the numbers around,” he said. “But we do see people buy multiple tickets with the same numbers in order to increase that prize.”
“And sometimes it works,” he said.
Multiple tickets with the same numbers netted payouts of $100,000 or more three times in 2017, and five times in 2016, he said.
