B.C. lottery winner's odd strategy earns him two jackpot cheques

A decades-long habit of doubling down has paid off in a big way for Surrey, B.C. resident Harry Black.

For more than 30 years, the 66-year-old film industry worker has been selecting the same numbers on his lottery tickets. Not that unusual in itself, perhaps. But Black doesn’t buy just one ticket each week; he always buys two – and uses the same numbers for each ticket.

For years, Black says, he never won anything more than $10. But last month, his odd ticket-buying strategy paid off with a win in one of the biggest lottery jackpots in Canadian history.

Black won a portion of last month’s $63-million Lotto 6/49 draw. The jackpot had four winning tickets: a Vancouver man had one of those tickets, while a winner in Calgary had another. Each collected cheques for $15.8 million.
Black, though, had both of the other winning tickets. So on Tuesday, he collected two giant cheques, for a grand total of more than $31 million.
If Black had bought just one ticket, the pot would have been split three ways and he would have won $21 million. But because he bought two tickets, he earned himself an extra $10 million. It’s a dream scenario and one that's never happened in B.C.
At a news conference in Vancouver where Black accepted his cheques, he was asked what he planned to do with the money and what new “toys” he wanted to buy.
“I already got enough toys,” he quickly responded. “I worked hard for them. Maybe, I’ll have time to play with them.”