Lucky Lisa’s longtime Keno numbers came through, delivering a $30,000 win! |
Abingdon woman lands big win with 8-spot wager
When league-bowling night rolls around each week, Lisa Poling-Pollitt and her husband head to a Forest Hill establishment for a night of fun and games. While he spends the next few hours bowling, Lisa takes a seat with friends at Fisherman’s Catch Restaurant & Lounge to enjoy the evening and play a few rounds of Keno.
The Abingdon couple have followed this routine for decades. However, winning a $30,000 prize on an 8-spot wager was anything but routine for Lisa!
Lisa said she always adds the Super Bonus multiplier feature to her Keno bets, and has played the same three family birth dates for years. The loyal player places either a 4-spot or an 8-spot wager using those numbers. “I like it because they are easy to remember,” her husband said.
The Harford County woman had settled in with her friends on Sept. 10, when Lottery luck came her way. She decided to play 10 draws using the numbers 3, 4, 8, 11, 16, 17, 62 and 71.
“I’m sitting there, watching the numbers, going, ‘That doesn’t look right. That looks odd,’” she recalled, while telling her winning story at Lottery headquarters in Baltimore. On the fourth of the 10 drawings, her eight numbers appeared one by one on the Keno screen. “When I saw that 71, I knew I won!”
The mother of four and grandmother of four checked the ticket using her the Maryland Lottery app on her phone. Seeing a message directing her to take the ticket to a Lottery retailer, the 56-year-old signed the back of the ticket. She has won smaller prizes so many times over the years that the couple has memorized Keno’s prize structure and know to immediately sign a winning ticket. Lisa carried it to the bartender, who happily verified the big win for his longtime customer. Lisa and her friends celebrated and watched as Lisa’s 10-draw ticket won two more small prizes that gave her a total win of $30,024 for the evening.
Her husband recalls greeting her happily when he finished bowling. “Look honey, I bowled 162,” he said. Her reply: “Look honey, I won $30,000!”
The happy pair are no strangers to Lottery prizes, having won a Ravens scratch-off second-chance promotion five years ago. They traveled with the Baltimore Ravens to a game in Kansas City and still keep photos of their big trip on their phones. The entrepreneurs, who own a pest control company, plan to put Lisa’s big prize aside as a nest egg to get them through the slow winter months. A vacation trip is also a possibility, they said.
Her lucky Lottery retailer in Harford County is a winner, too. Fisherman’s Catch Restaurant & Lounge located at 1 Maurice Drive in Forest Hill earns a $300 bonus from the Lottery for selling a winning Keno ticket of $10,000 or more. The bonus is equal to 1 percent of the prize.