Quick pick. Birthdays. Mathematical formulas. We’ve heard tons of stories from winners about how they picked their winning numbers. While there is no statistical advantage to choosing them one way over another, frequently players who pick their own numbers tell us that they choose ones that have personal meaning. In the case of Chris Mannion’s $200,000 Powerball win, it is exactly the opposite.
Mannion, an electrical maintenance man from Jackson Springs, said he used playing cards to pick the numbers that won him the six-figure prize in the Wednesday, February 23 Powerball drawing. He plays this way because he doesn’t want the numbers to “come from his head” at all. His unique system involves combining portions of two decks of playing cards with the numbers 1 through 59 hand-written on each card. Then, in a fashion similar to flipping cards over in a game of solitaire, Mannion goes through the deck until his six numbers have been chosen at random (for the Powerball number, he continues flipping over cards until a number between 1 and 39 is face up).
That’s how Mannion selected the set of numbers that wound up matching all five white balls – and was two digits off from the Powerball – in last Wednesday’s drawing. He said he plans to use his winnings, which totaled $136,000 after taxes, to get a new car and add some specialty features to his motorcycle. He purchased his lucky ticket at the Wilco on NC Highway 211 East in Candor.
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