Lottery player’s small wins encourage him to keep playing. Then he really wins big

Donald Rice had just won $20 playing the lottery, then decided to buy another ticket with the winnings and won $50 in Virginia.

Encouraged by this streak of smaller wins, he said he bought two $500,000 Spectacular scratch-off tickets. And he won big, the Virginia Lottery said June 12.

“I looked. I looked again,” he told lottery officials. “I said, ‘OK, it’s legit! It’s real!’”

The Emporia man beat the 1-in-1,346,400 odds to win a top prize of $500,000, claiming the second of three top prizes available in the game, lottery officials said.

He bought his winning ticket at a convenience store in Jarratt.

Emporia is a small city in southern Virginia, about a 70-mile drive south from Richmond.

This story was originally published June 13, 2024 at 11:19 AM with the headline "Lottery player’s small wins encourage him to keep playing. Then he really wins big."