Winning Lotto Twice Is More Common Than You Think
Winning lotto twice is not as rare as you might think, but winning twice in close succession doesn’t happen very often. Lottery officials have said it’s “more common” for many years to pass between Division 1 wins. Believe it or not, there is an Australian lotto player, a man from Beechworth in Victoria, who won Division 1 not once, not twice, but three times in 2008 alone. Talk about beating the odds! We collected some stories from lotto players in Australia who experienced a once-in-a-lifetime event – twice!
Lighting struck twice for one very lucky Melbourne man who won Division 1 in last weekend’s $4,000,000 Saturday Lotto, or TattsLotto as it is known in Victoria. Astoundingly, it was not the first time he had won Division 1; he won $744,000 back in 1988. This time around, he was one of twelve Division 1 winners in the November 14th draw that took home over $349,000 in prize money each.
Last weekend’s $4,000,000 Saturday Lotto draw was also doubly lucky for a family from Kalbarri in Western Australia. After an embarrassing ticket double up, the family came forward with two Division 1 winning tickets totalling nearly $700,000 in prize money. They had forgotten about the first ticket when they purchased the second with the same numbers.
A man from Northcote in Melbourne won over $416,000 in a $4,000,000 TattsLotto draw in March 2013, and obviously felt that once wasn’t enough. On the 20th of April that same year, he played the same numbers in the same draw and won Division 1 again. His second prize was worth nearly $800,000, bringing his total winnings in a six week period to over $1.2 million.
A group of friends from the Perth suburb of Willetton managed to win not one, but two Division 1 prizes worth $800,000 each, after their syndicate coordinator mistakenly bought a second winning ticket in a $4,000,000 Saturday Lotto draw. One of the winners explained how he had accidentally selected an advanced play option while buying the syndicate’s regular Saturday Lotto ticket, which created an extra entry in that week’s draw. Each syndicate member took home $157,474.
Another ticket double up resulted in double the prize money for a man from the northern Brisbane suburb of Aspley in 2013. He bought his first winning ticket from a local newsagency earlier in the week because of a planned holiday, but completely forgot about the purchase and bought a second ticket with the same winning numbers the day before his trip. Both tickets combined brought him over $1.6 million in the $4,000,000 Saturday Lotto draw.
Forgetfulness paid off for a Melbourne woman who accidentally purchased two tickets in the same $4,000,000 TattsLotto draw in 2013 and won Division 1 with both. The ticket were bought from different newsagencies in Melbourne’s CBD and played with her family’s birthday numbers which proved extremely lucky, landing her two Division 1 prizes worth over $413,000 each. Her bad memory made her over $835,000 richer!
An Australian man who bought his charity lotto tickets as a means of donating money to vulnerable children was rewarded for his generosity but not one but two first prize wins. The first time around he won a Mercedes-Benz in the December 2011 Act for Kids Lottery draw, with which he surprised his wife on Christmas Day. It took less than a year for him to win another Mercedes-Benz in the October 2012 Act For Kids Lottery draw.
Like other forgetful souls who got exceedingly lucky, a syndicate of three sisters from the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia were gobsmacked to realise that two of them had both bought Division 1 winning tickets in the same 2013 draw. Their double win landed them with a total of $435,000 in the $4,000,000 Saturday Lotto draw, or X Lotto as it is known in that state. The trio had played their parents’ lucky numbers after their mum and dad passed away.
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