Imagine this. You get up, pour yourself a coffee, grab a newspaper, and pull out your lottery tickets to check the numbers. Much to your surprise you see a lot of matching numbers. 5 out of 6, along with the bonus number! Holy crap! I won, I won!

You’d freak out. Right?

Well, this morning, 239 poor schmucks did exactly that. They checked their numbers and thought they won the second prize in Canada’s 6-49 lottery last night. This prize is normally about $130,000. But there are normally only about 2 winners, not two hundred and thirty nine winners. Because of the shared prize pool, these unfortunate fortunates will receive just under $1200 each. To add insult to injury, the folks who matched five numbers without the bonus number (third prize) will receive roughly $2200 each.

You’d freak out. Right?

Man. What a roller coaster ride that must be. You expect to walk away with at least a hundred grand, tax free, and end up getting only twelve hundred? How could that happen. Well, the winning numbers were 23, 40, 41, 42, 44, and 45, bonus number 43. It looks to me like a whole bunch of people hand-picked 40 through 45 as their numbers. Not a good idea, and last night’s draw proves it. Chances are, there are many others doing exactly the same thing. Can you imagine if the “23″ and the bonus number were switched? I did the math… the top prize would only have been around $16,000. Hardly life changing.

So, when picking numbers, avoid patterns or this could be you. This has been a public service announcement, brought to you by the makers of OhMeNerves.com