I'm A Winner!!

I've played the Kentucky Lottery's Pick Four game for about two years now, faithfully.  I play in both the midday and evening drawings, and I play the same set of numbers all the time -- 3209.  I've been lucky enough to win "big" a couple of times - once, I won $600 and another time won $100.  Two or three of my numbers have been coming up a lot lately so I feel a win coming soon.  But I digress.  The Kentucky Lottery folks started a "Fun Club" - when you have a losing scratch off ticket,  you can go online and enter in a 18-digit number that is on the ticket and you get points for each losing ticket.  You can cash in points for gift cards and cool prizes.  I don't normally buy scratch off tickets unless I have a coupon from the KY Lottery folks so I wouldn't accumulate many points.  But I had an idea this weekend and when I was at the grocery store Saturday night, I asked the clerk if I could have the losing tickets that were in the garbage can beside the lottery ticket vending machine.  She told me sure.  So yesterday afternoon, I got out the bag of tickets and started entering the numbers.  I was on my third ticket when I kept getting an error saying that the number was invalid and to try again.  I tried a few more times to enter it and kept getting the same error, and it locked me out for 12 hours and said to try again.  Well, this morning I tried once and got the same error.  I just put the card aside and moved on.  The next ticket I tried to enter was the same way.  I looked at this ticket, a lowly $1 scratch off, and noticed that it was a winning ticket, not a losing one.  THAT'S why it wouldn't accept it.  I went back and looked at the other ticket and sure enough, it was a winner - a free ticket.  And it was a $20 ticket!! Woohoo.  I entered more tickets, and after awhile, I had accumulated $31 in winning tickets. 

Before you think "Puddin, they cashed those tickets in already so you can't double-dip."  Au contraire.  These tickets weren't cashed in - when they cash in winning tickets, the clerk tears them in half and throws them away.  These are winning tickets that the people just didn't pay attention to.  Lucky for me. 

I'll keep you updated from time to time with how more $$$ I've been able to "win" from these alleged "losing" tickets, and I'll let you know what cool prizes I get with my points.