It’s the nightmare scenario we’ve all feared when playing the lotto. Imagine your lucky numbers come up but you’ve lost the ticket or thrown it away. This nightmare became reality for a woman in Virginia, USA. In the end, the nightmare turned into a dream come true.

Mary Elliot, a retired healthcare worker, hadn’t played the lottery in over a decade but suddenly felt a hunch to play. Elliot is not a believer in Lady Luck but is a firm believer in the Good Lord.

“I just don’t think people are just lucky,” Elliot said. “I think that if God’s got something for you, he’s going to see that you get it.”

Elliot decided to play the ‘Cash 5 with EZ Match’ lotto game offered by the Virginia Lottery, at a cost of $2 (approx. £1.53), which she purchased from a Food Lion grocery store in Dillwyn, Virginia.

Lottery experts such as lottery operators, academics who carry out research on the lottery and even ex-lottery winners, often advise against picking dates, such as birthdays, to use for your lucky numbers.

When you pick lottery numbers based on dates, you limit yourself to only 31 numbers and there is a higher chance of sharing the prize picking dates for lottery numbers is very common. At the end of the day, any combination of numbers has the same odds of being drawn so in terms of winning, it doesn’t matter too much if you choose dates but if you want to lower your chances of having to share a prize, it’s best to avoid them.

Mary Elliot picked the birthdays of her relatives, including the birthday of her son who passed away a few years ago.

The jackpot up for grabs was a tidy $110,000 (approx. £84,279).

The draw was held on the night of Thursday 24th of February, 2022. However, Elliot had mixed the dates up and spent the following day anticipating the draw. Elliot checked the lottery’s website repeatedly in frustration, to little avail.

It then hit her – the draw had taken place the previous day. When she checked the numbers for the previous draw, they matched her own.

Elliot, a diabetic, felt a sensation comparable to a blood sugar lowering, “when I saw I’d won, I couldn’t stop shaking to save my life!” Elliot said.

With her heart beating fast, full of anxiety and with the shakes, Elliot now needed to recover the ticket which she had already binned in frustration.

The previous night, after thinking that she had been unlucky, Elliot had thrown out the winning ticket along with several other lottery tickets which had not won anything.

Luckily, the rubbish had not been taken out yet and after some digging through the bins, the coffee-stained ticket was recovered.

Despite her initial relief, the nightmare was not yet over.

When Elliot scanned the ticket’s bar code with her phone, the message said she was not a winner.

Fortunately, her quick-witted husband had idea to let the ticket dry out and low and behold, a few hours later, her jackpot win was confirmed. This was followed up by a call from lottery officials and from a store clerk.

Elliot attributed her win to divine intervention rather than pure luck and claimed to be anticipating guidance from above before deciding how to spend the money, “I’m waiting on God’s plan” she affirmed.

Stories about would-be lottery winners losing their tickets are not uncommon. In March 2021, a man from Tennessee had to retrace his steps to find his lost lottery ticket worth $1.2 million (approx. £920,000), which he found lying on the ground. That same month, a woman in Massachusetts was reunited with a million-dollar lottery ticket which she had thrown away after thinking it was worthless. Fortunately, the owners of the convenience store where the ticket was purchased checked the discarded ticket and knew who the winner was as she was a regular customer and dropped by her place of work to give her back the winning ticket.

In January this year, a woman in Michigan won $3 million (approx. £2.3 million) on the Mega Millions lottery but only realised she’d won after she checked spam folder and saw an e-mail informing her that she’d won the prize on New Year’s Eve, 2021. Whilst many people might have dismissed the e-mail as a scam since it ended up in the spam folder, the woman contacted the Michigan lottery headquarters and her win was confirmed.

If you bet on the lottery with Lottoland you don’t have to worry about losing any potential lottery winnings.

Lottoland is an online lotto betting operator which is regulated by the UK Gambling Commission.

Lottoland will send you an e-mail confirming your entry into the draw along with your lucky numbers, which you can select yourself or at random by using the QuickPick option.

Lottoland gives UK punters the chance to bet on lotteries from around the world which are not otherwise available in the UK. With Lottoland, you bet on the outcome of the official lottery and if your numbers come up, you win the same prize.

One of the most popular lotteries to bet on amongst UK lotto enthusiasts is the Irish Lotto as the jackpot odds are significantly more favourable than other major lotteries, yet you can still win jackpots as high as €19 million (approx. £15.8 million).

The odds of winning the Irish Lotto jackpot are 1 in 10,737,563 in comparison with the UK National Lottery at 1 in 45,057,474.

The jackpot odds for the lottery which was won by Mary Elliot in Virginia were significantly lower than most big international lotteries at 1 in 750,000. This is not too far off from the jackpot odds offered by the Polish Mini Lotto at 1 in 850,668. You can bet on the Polish Mini Lotto from the UK at Lottoland and win a top prize of £70,000.

Lottoland pays out winnings from smaller prize tiers directly from the funds generated through sales. Lottoland has well-established partnerships with major insurance companies and a tried and tested business model which allows the company to pay out the world’s biggest lottery jackpots, such as the €90 million (approx. £74.8 million) Guinness World Record for the largest online gambling payment which Lottoland paid out in 2018.

When you set up an account with Lottoland, you can view all your transaction history and you’ll receive alerts about any wins or upcoming draws which you have bought tickets for.

Since we’re on the subject of lottery nightmares, one of the biggest fears of any lotto enthusiast is finding out that you’re usual lucky numbers came up but you forgot to enter the draw!

If you set up a subscription with Lottoland you can rest assured that you won’t miss out on any draws. You can set your subscription up for up to 52 weeks and chose which days you’d like to enter the draw on. You can even choose an option to enter the draw when the jackpot reaches a certain amount.

So remember, next time you pop down to your local corner shop for a pint of milk and some lottery tickets, make sure to keep your tickets safe, check them properly and make sure you’re checking the right draw date!

On the other hand, you could bet on the lottery online with Lottoland and forget about the draw until you get you receive either an e-mail alert or a very pleasant call from Lottoland’s friendly customer services team informing you of your win.

E-mails from Lottoland shouldn’t end up in your spam folder, but it’s never a bad idea to check! Just be cautious of e-mails from any generous Nigerian lottery winners which seem too good to be true.