via BlackAmericaWeb:
Robert Bailey has been playing the same six lottery numbers for 25 years and plans to keep on doing it — even though his digits finally hit for a $343.8 million Powerball win, the largest in New York Lottery history.
Bailey, 67, was introduced by lottery officials Wednesday as the record-breaking winner at the Resorts World Casino in Queens.
The total prize in the Oct. 27 drawing was nearly $700 million, but he will split the jackpot with a woman in Iowa who also picked the winning numbers, 8, 12, 13, 19 and 27, with a Powerball of 4.
Bailey bought his winning ticket at a deli in Harlem. He usually buys tickets at a few different stores, but on this particular day, it was raining and he was visiting a friend, so he ducked into the deli and grabbed a Powerball ticket.
After checking the winning numbers that night online, he was shocked.
“I said to myself, ‘These look like my numbers.’ I tried to remain calm and sat down to watch some shows I had on my DVR. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night,” Bailey said.
Bailey, a retired federal government employee, said he got the lucky numbers from a family member years earlier. The most he had ever won using them previously was $30,000 from a lucky Take Five lottery ticket
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