Retired teacher wins $576,900 with 25 tickets

A retired teacher from Prince George’s County must be one of the most bizarre lottery winners in the Maryland Lottery’s history. Playing the Bonus Match 5 game, the woman, who has preferred to remain anonymous, landed a huge payday - $576,900, playing with not one, not two, but 25 tickets!

Playing the exact same numbers, the winner was able to hit a substantial amount, with each ticket contributing $23,076. The teacher has been a bit of a Bonus Match 5 loyalist and has not really improvised in her choice of lottery games over the years, sticking closely with the title.

The game is worth $1 per ticket to play, and the 25 winning tickets cost the winner $25. A good return on her investment. However, it’s not clear how much money she has spent playing the game over the years. The teacher already told to the Maryland Lottery, that her mortgage is priority one.

Just covering that would be enough to make her happy, the woman said in a statement for the lottery. Yet, she had one small regret. The winner did not know that there was an actual cap to how much money could be won from Bonus Match 5, even with multiple tickets, though, and although she admitted to having been a little disappointed at first, it was all right anyhow.

Why buy the 25 tickets, the lottery asked her, and the retiree simply explained that it had been suggested to her by other lottery aficionados. The game itself does not have too long odds compared to the Mega Millions or Powerball, but the chance of lining up five numbers is still rather substantial - 1 in 575,757.

Putting 25 tickets on the same numbers and winning is most certainly a remarkable chance. But the woman had been using this stratagem for a while, managing to hit multiple smaller prizes using the same numbers over the years. Big jackpots have been falling all over the place, with Illinois recently producing a $2m winner.

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