Ontario Lottery Winner Says He Picked The 'Most Common Numbers' & Took Home $118K
Did he seriously find a trick to winning?
Lotto 6/49 winner Rendall Pennie.
If there was ever a trick to becoming an Ontario lottery winner, there's no doubt everyone would want to know about it — and it seems like someone may have found one.
An Ontario man recently took home just over $118,000 with the second prize in a recent Lotto 6/49 draw, and he's crediting his own skills with numbers for the win.
Rendall Pennie is a construction from Kirkfield, a small town of fewer than 5,000 people just over an hour north of the GTA.
He said he's been playing the lottery for years, and it seems the odds were finally in his favour in the January 4, 2023, draw.
"I've been playing LOTTO 6/49 since it came out," Pennie told OLG when he picked up his winnings at the prize centre in Toronto. "I put together an excel sheet with all the winning numbers and analyze the data to pick the most common numbers."
It seems like his strategy paid off.
Pennie said he checked his ticket on the OLG app to find out he'd won.
"I heard the winning jingle and I didn't believe it," he said. "I showed my partner and her eyes opened wide and she said, 'no way!'"
Pennie said with his $118,002.40 (to be exact), he plans to pay off bills, buy some new furniture, and "invest the rest."
"This money [is] going to do so much for me," he told OLG.
His winning ticket was purchased at a Loblaws location on Kent Street in Lindsay, Ontario.
If you're curious whether Pennie's spreadsheet trick actually worked, the answer is likely not. And if it did, it took him just over 40 years of spreadsheets to find the winning combo since Lotto 6/49 launched on June 12, 1982.
According to playsmart.ca, the odds of winning Lotto 6/49 are "approximately 1 in 14 million, similar to the odds of putting the name of everyone in Ontario in a hat - a very tall hat - and randomly pulling out your own."
Lotto 6/49 draws are held every Wednesday and Saturday, with a $5 million jackpot guaranteed for every draw.
If you or someone you know is struggling with problem gambling, refer to these helplines across Canada. Support is available.