CNN
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A Maryland woman who’d played the same lottery numbers for a year won big after getting some inspiration from a previous winner, she told lottery officials.
The unidentified woman from Forestville, which is about 10 miles east of Washington, DC, won $50,000 in a Pick 5 game, according to the Maryland Lottery.
She’s calling herself “Grateful Winner,” which is what appears on her winning lottery check from the June 23 midday drawing.
The woman said she’d read a Maryland Lottery story about a player “who decided to play one of his Pick 5 number combinations after seeing variations of his numbers drawn,” a news release stated.
Using the technique to her own benefit, the federal government worker said she began seeking out patterns in the Pick 5 winning numbers.
Between June 5 to June 21, the woman saw that the number six was the first Pick 5 digit that was drawn in four games, so she tried an experiment, the Maryland Lottery said in the news release.
Normally, she’d play the numbers 56389, but this time, she switched the first two numbers in the sequence and placed a $1 straight bet at a 7-Eleven in Prince George’s County.
It paid off.
“I just started playing that number last week and I couldn’t believe it,” the winner said in the news release.
She said she found out she’d won while checking her phone during a manicure appointment.
“My eyes started to water, I was shaking and I couldn’t see,” the woman recalled.
The winner said she planned to use the funds to pay off bills.