I like to scratch tickets and do so on a regular basis getting my fair share of decent winners. I have yet to encounter that truly life-changing ticket. My biggest win so far has been 10K and I have had one 5K win and a bunch of 2K and 1K's as well so yes, obviously I play quite a bit!
For the last three weeks I have been doing my weekly grocery shopping at the local Market Basket. After going through the checkout I wander over to the scratch ticket vending machine, slide in my $20 and purchase a $10 cashword and two $5 40X tix. They recently installed a scanner to verify ones age to enable purchases from this machine so the use of the machine has been much lower than it once was.
Including just the last three weeks I have hit one $50 winner on the cashword and one break-even ticket on the 40X. One of my strategies for buying tix is to check the Mass Lottery website to see which ticket could be ripe to cough up a jackpot prize. For this reason, i have been playing the 40X ticket.
So yesterday while perusing the "Winners Section" on the MSL site I see something that makes my stomach sink and my head hurt hard. It seems that someone purchased a 40X ticket out of the machine in Market Basket and hit for 1 MILLION DOLLARS! Yes, I lost sleep over this and will likely continue to do so! I was so ffffing close to owning that ticket! I was playing from a pack that contained the ticket I have been looking for since I first starting playing these evil cards!
My Mantra has always been: Right Place + Right Time+ Right Ticket
I had the place and ticket right but missed out on the time! For all I know that dude that won could have sauntered up to that machine right before (or after) me and stole my dream away! The worst part about this that it happened once before many years ago but it was not a ticket I had been regularly playing so this one hurts worse- Far Worse!
Okay, I feel better (a little) having typed that out. Time to get back to looking for that life-changer! Good Luck everyone....