Chance encounter gets him half a million

He now believes the adage is true: You can’t win if you don’t play.

Last Thursday, a Johnston resident was minding his own business at the Field House Pub in East Providence when the stranger next to him asked if he knew how to play Keno.

The man from Johnston, who wishes to remain anonymous, offered to show the stranger how the game works. He ran his own set of numbers as a demonstration and went on with his night.

An hour later, on his way out the door, he scanned the ticket. A pub employee said no amount was shown but instead a message read “claim at the lottery.”

During a phone interview with the SunRise on Friday, he noted that he doesn’t gamble or regularly play the lottery.

Curious to know how much he won, he downloaded the Rhode Island Lottery mobile app to scan the ticket and discovered he had won $500,010. About 35,000 users logged onto the app in the past month to check on winnings.

According to a state lottery spokesperson, this is the highest possible prize to win with Keno Overtime and this is the biggest Keno win since 2018. The game started in 1992 with the chance to win up to $100,000. Keno Plus started in 2001 with the chance to win up to $1 million.

The Johnston man wagered one dollar on a 10-spot Keno game and added the Plus and Overtime features for an additional one dollar each.  He matched 0 numbers in the base game to win $10, thanks to the 2X Keno Plus multiplier. His big win came in the Overtime drawing, where he matched 8 out of his 10 numbers to win the maximum Keno Overtime prize of $500,000.  

“You always think these games are rigged,” he said, noting that the whirlwind experience has been surreal. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime, actually more like once-in-a-billion-lifetimes experience.”

When he went to claim his winnings at the Rhode Island Lottery offices in Cranston, he overheard the team wondering “if this was the one.”

“I was expecting balloons to fall from the ceiling,” he said with a laugh.

Asked what he plans to do with the money, he talked about home repairs and his family. He says during COVID a contractor left his home in disrepair and then he faced a cancer diagnosis.

“It’s time to finish the house repairs and help my kids,” he said.