Many gamblers have won big in the casino. In most cases, seasoned gamblers have an advantage over ordinary or amateur players. Average people do not have the skills and money to play with high stakes in traditional casinos.
However, there are rare incidences where ordinary people have won big not only in online casino games but also in traditional casinos.
Here are six lucky everyday gamblers who hit the jackpot.
Patricia Demauro
The odds of surviving 154 straight rolls without producing a seven are just 1 in 156 trillion. Patricia Demauro achieved the impossible in 2009 when she performed 154 straight rolls before rolling a seven.
Demauro rolled the dice, then rolled again and again as the crowd gathered to watch her achieve the impossible. She also earned herself several hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
John Heywood
In 2015, Heywood won one of the biggest real money online slots jackpots. Heywood played through Microgaming’s Mega Moolah and won 13.2 million pounds.
Heywood only used £30 for the bet and defied the odds to win a Mega Jackpot. He did not have a lot of money as he worked a minimum-wage job after finishing his tour in Afghanistan. Heywood thought he’d won £10,000 but later learned his win was worth millions.
Cynthia Jay-Brennan
Cynthia earned the title for the second-largest slots jackpot in history when she won $34.9 million at the Desert Inn Casino.
She worked as a cocktail waitress in Las Vegas. On a fateful day, Cynthia played the Megabucks slot Machine and landed the three Megabucks symbols totaling $34.9 million.
Johanna Huendl
In 2002, Huendl was going for a breakfast buffet at Bally’s Casino Las Vegas. She decided to play the Megabucks machine before her breakfast.
The decision turned out to be a life-changing one when she hit the Megabucks jackpot and won $22,621,230. Huendl had seen someone win $3,000, and she was hoping for the same win only to win a much bigger prize.
Soraya Lowell
Lowell won a record-breaking payout in bingo in 2008 at Club 3000 bingo hall in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire.
The mother of four went to the bingo hall with her neighbor, not knowing she would be the lucky winner of a £1,167,795 payout. She shared her winnings with her friend and even kept her minimum-income cleaning job because she did not know what to do with it.
Elmer Sherwin
Sherwin won IGT’s Megabucks Jackpot twice, making him one of the luckiest gamblers. The odds of winning the Megabucks jackpot are 1 in 50 million, but for Sherwin, who has gambled since he was old enough, he never won much until his sixties.
In 1989, he stopped at Las Vegas to hit the casinos using his gambling allowance of $100 a week. Elmer struck gold and won $21.2 million.
Final Remarks
Everyone dreams of winning big, yet a majority of players do not see this dream come true. The six gamblers discussed achieved the impossible, even with no gambling knowledge. Their stories are a testimony that gambling can instantly change lives from working a minimum-income job to living it large.