Turns out, when it comes to beating long odds, Jeffrey Bock has just the right touch.
For the second time this year, the 65-year-old St. Paul retiree has struck lottery gold, with his latest odds-defying reward proving even more lucrative than the first.
Bock scored a $100,000 top prize payout by matching all 12 numbers in Sunday's All or Nothing drawing, Minnesota Lottery officials said Tuesday.
About eight months ago, Bock won $20,000 with a $2 scratch-off ticket.
After Sunday's drawing, "I scanned my ticket, and the message said to 'claim at the Lottery,' " Bock told lottery officials.
Bock said he assumed that he had won $1,000, but a friend told him he thought it was actually a $100,000 winner.
To that, Bock replied, " 'If it's $100,000, I'm fainting. So you better bring water!' "
With that, Bock and his friend headed off to lottery headquarters in Roseville, water in hand, and the grandest of grand prizes was confirmed.
The maximum payout for the $1 All or Nothing bet is made when either all of the 12 numbers or none of them are matched. There are smaller prizes for matching fewer of the numbers.
Lottery officials broke down the odds of what Bock pulled off, and they are staggering:
The chances of his All or Nothing payout were roughly 1 in 2.7 million.
Earlier this year, Bock beat 1-in-302,943 odds with his $20,000 Wild Cherries scratch ticket.
Lottery spokeswoman Marie Hinton also checked with the office's research director on what the odds were of Bock hitting both prizes (the payouts were subject to taxes, by the way).
"He stressed we can't calculate that for this particular player because we would have no way of knowing how many of each ticket he purchased," Hinton said.
However, she continued, "He told me that the odds of winning both prizes if one ticket of each were purchased would be 1-in-811,244,800,000."
Yes, that's more than 811 billion.
The gas station that sold Bock the winning All or Nothing ticket — the SuperAmerica Sunrise at 16 14th Av. NE in St. Cloud — earned a $1,000 bonus from the lottery for being the seller.
Bock has been stopping at the station every morning for the past month or so, "getting a coffee refill and sometimes a water and a newspaper," said manager Julie Dubbin.
"He was in this morning, and we brought it up," Dubbin said. "He was excited, and we were really excited for him too."
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Congrats on your double win.
You made it as a Bandit
My good wishes, spend it wisely you still have got a long way to go
Nice, Congrats Mr. Bock.
Bock scored a $100,000 top prize payout by matching all 12 numbers in Sunday's All or Nothing drawing, Minnesota Lottery officials said Tuesday.
Both Texas and Georgia pay $250,000 for winning the same prize. But I guess it's not much different than winning a $12 million MM prize the drawing after the jackpot was $200 million.
Don't know about Georgia, but AoN tics in Tx cost $2.
While I do play this game, I do wish tics were either $1, or the jackpot would be more than $250000 for $2, it is what it is. There are very few jackpot winners down here in the game, and they don't sell very many tics, which goes along with few jackpot winners.
Congrats to Jeffrey on his second win!
Hummm... He looks like someone famous but can't put my finger on it......