Canadian Lotteries 

Which is the luckiest place in B.C to play 50/50 lottery?

Kamal Kaur

Where to play BC 50- 50 Lottery

In a news report by CBC Brain Davidson  buys the occasional B.C. 50/50 ticket and he saw that the lottery wins mount in Burns Lake.  This north central B.C. village has been racking up lottery wins and fuelling a buying frenzy. Many of the residents from this tiny claim to have won it multiple times.

Davidson, who lives in Abbotsford, has been blogging about Burns Lake’s winning ways and started noticing something odd on the B.C. Lottery website two years ago and the trend has continued. Burns Lake residents have been consistently hitting it big when it comes to the province’s 50/50 lottery and they appear to be winning more than 100 times more often than statistics say they should.

But it is not only Davidson who thinks about Burns Lake as the luckiest place to play BC 50/50 but twitter too boosts of the wins here from the past two three years.

What is BC 50/50 lottery?

What is BC 50-50 lottery

BC 50/50 lotto is a game brought to you by BCLC and the daily draws take place at 1pm, 3pm, 6pm and 9pm.

The BC 50/50 jackpot and odds of winning are different with every draw, so the prize amount depends on how many people are playing and the size of the prize pool. The more picks you buy for a draw, the more chances you have to win!

To play this lottery all you need is BC 50/50 tickets that can be purchased at a retail location near you.

Then choose up to 15 picks of BC 50/50 and play up to 10 consecutive draws. You can buy:

  • 1 pick for $1
  • 2 picks for $2
  • 3 picks for $3
  • 4 picks for $4
  • 6 picks for $5 (save $1)
  • 15 picks for $10 (save $5)

Lotto only draw from tickets sold, so there’s always a winner. If you exactly match your pick to the BC 50/50 winning number, you win. The more picks you buy for a draw, the more chances you have to win!

The B.C. 50/50 lottery has four daily draws and smaller payouts, but there’s a guaranteed winner from the tickets sold.

Burns Lake the luckiest place to play Lottery in Canada

Davidson calculates the town of approximately 2,000 people won a total of almost $200,000 on the BC 50/50 lottery last year alone. That’s about $100 per person.

What are the odds to win?

The B.C. 50/50 doesn’t mean you have a 50-50 chance of winning — just that half of the pot goes into B.C. Lottery corporation revenues and half goes to the winner.

It doesn’t have huge jackpots, but there’s a guaranteed winner for each of four daily draws, because a BCLC computer picks from the tickets sold.

You can buy one chance for a dollar, or get 15 chances for $10. The lottery corporation says the odds of winning depend on how many people enter each draw.

The average payout appears to between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Burns Lake the luckiest spot to play BC 50/50

At Burns Lake sSome of them are winning have won more than 15 or 16 times.

Burns Lake to play BC lotteries

The Burns Lake Husky convenience store claims to have sold the most B.C. 50/50 winning tickets in the province — and the sheer volume surprises retail manager Kanwaljeet Singh as much as it surprises Davidson.

“We are really amazed to see this kind of winning thing every time,” said Singh, 29. “Some of them won three of four times. Some of them are winning like 15, 16 times. Mostly it’s different people.”

Even google research shows that the convenience store at the Burns Lake Husky gas station claims to have sold more winning tickets for the B.C. 50/50 than anywhere else in the province.

How to play BC 50-50 lottery

Also winners have bought winning tickets from Clayton Charlie at the rival Sne C’al Yegh gas bar and convenience store, just up the road on the Carrier First Nation . In fact, Charlie says he himself won $3,900 a year ago and he knows someone who has won 22 times.

One minute up Highway 16, there’s a third hotspot to buy winning 50/50 tickets — the Rainbow gas bar. The manager says word is spreading to tourists who stop there, one third of the way from Prince George to Prince Rupert. “They are thinking Burns Lake is the luckiest hotspot in B.C.,” saId Sara Tibbetts. But then Tibbetts says something that starts to shed a little light on what’s behind the winning streak. “I’m going to say more tickets are being purchased in Burns Lake.”

This gives an idea why Burns Lake has so many winners of BC 50/50. Means if you spend big you win big. At the Husky, Singh says 150 to 200 people come in to buy 50/50 tickets  every day.

So if you’re playing more, you’re winning more. He says some customers are spending big in hopes of winning big. According to Singh many buyers spend over $100 everyday to buy lottery tickets in Burns Lake. Singh says a kind of lottery mania is fuelling the ticket-buying frenzy.

According to BCLC in 2017 Burns Lake contributed to 4.4 percent of overall B.C. 50/50 draws. Tickets purchased in Burns Lake represent 4.9 percent of overall B.C. 50/50 wins.

Another lucky place according to Davidson following the steps of Burns Lake is Pemberton. “Pemberton is taking up the ball now,” said Davidson, referring to the community north of Whistler. “They’re starting to win all the time, too. Maybe people up there are starting to do the same thing.”

You can try your luck too. Play online at Play Now website or with the retailer that’s your choice. But one thing is sure at Burns Lake people will buy at their luckiest store and win more. (with inputs from CBC news report).