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Has anyone won the lottery twice?

woman sitting in front of a laptop with her hand in the air celebrating a lottery win

Winning the lottery two times is rare but it could happen. In this article, Age UK reveals some of the lucky people around the world that have won the lottery twice.

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We all dream of winning the lottery, but can you imagine how it would feel to win it twice? Despite the chances of it happening being incredibly small, there are reports of twice-lucky lottery winners all over the world.

Can you win the lottery twice?

Yes! You absolutely can win the lottery twice, and it does occasionally happen. Here are just a few notable examples and inspiring stories:

  • David and Kathleen Long became the first couple to go public as double EuroMillions winners back in 2013. The Scunthorpe couple won £1 million on the same night that EuroMillions made 100 millionaires in the same draw, before winning a second million just a few months later. They even won a dream car. The couple had been facing tough times due to illness and used their winnings to get married and retire early.
  • Bill Morgan, a truck driver from Australia, won the lottery twice in an unbelievable set of circumstances. He bought his winning ticket not long after surviving a major heart attack, and was delighted to win a car. When asked by a local news station to recreate the circumstances of the win, he went back to the same store and bought another lottery ticket. He scratched the card and was amazed to find he’d won a fantastic $250,000.
  • Gayle Say, a cleaner and grandmother from Coventry, scored a double win when she accidentally bought two tickets with identical numbers. Without realising, she’d copied out the same numbers twice when buying her tickets. Gayle was delighted about the mistake in the end, as she won two prizes of £500,000 apiece. She used her winnings to retire early.
  • An anonymous Australian man also won the lottery twice after making a mistake with his numbers. He filled out the second row on the ticket with the same as the first, just to fill out the line. When those numbers came in, he won over £710,000 in total. He told local papers: “I’m in a state of shock.”
  • Another anonymous man, this time in France, won the My Million lottery twice in 18 months. He won €1m in November 2016, then continued to play each week until he won another €1m in May 2018.
  • A 40-year-old from Sydney described as “the world’s luckiest man” has won nearly 2.5 million Australian Dollars after two amazing lottery wins. This is remarkable in itself, but this lucky winner had both wins in the space of a week. He was one of 14 winners of a $20 million draw on the Saturday draw in May 2018, winning $1,457,834. The following Monday, he bought another ticket and won a further $1,020,487. Unable to believe his luck following the life-changing win, the man told local press that he planned to invest his winnings into the property market.

Double lottery wins are rare, but there have even been cases of people winning more often than this. The odds are very much against multiple lottery wins, but it definitely happens. A couple in Virginia, in the U.S. managed to win the lottery a staggering three times in two weeks. Described as “the luckiest couple in the world”, Calvin and Zatera Spencer won $1 million, a second $1 million and then a further $50,000 in March 2014. Apparently, they’re still crossing their fingers that they’ll be lucky yet another time.

What are the chances of winning the lottery twice?

The chances of winning the lottery more than once are always described by experts as being incredibly small. However, the actual odds depend on a few factors. For example:

  • How many people buy tickets for each draw
  • How long the lottery runs for
  • The rules of the particular game
  • How long you live for
  • How often you play
  • How you choose your numbers and whether you stick to the same numbers.

Working out the probability of winning the lottery once, twice or even three times can be very complex. Mathematicians and lottery experts are always throwing huge figures around to illustrate the chances of winning the lottery once, let alone twice.

When North Carolina resident Kimberly Morris won the lottery twice in one day, experts put the odds of it happening at 1 in 44,000,000. For David and Kathleen Long’s EuroMillions victory, gaming company Camelot had put the chances of it happening at 283 billion to one. In the case of the French My Millions double winner, mathematicians said he had achieved a 19 million to one stroke of luck.

Ultimately, it can be extremely difficult to predict the probability of something happening once, let alone twice. It’s even trickier when there are lots of changing factors involved, such as the numbers you choose. But one thing is certain - double lottery wins can and do happen!

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Last updated: Jul 26 2022

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