• A Virginia man purchased 30 Pick 4 lottery tickets, each costing $1.

• He used the same combination and they all won, earning him $150,000.

• This isn’t the first time he succeeded with this strategy; he won $125,000 in May last year.

A Virginia man bought 30 Pick 4 tickets, each costing $1 and using the same combination: 1-1-2-9.

Surprisingly, they were all winners, with each lottery ticket carrying a $5,000 prize.

As a result, Dana Bickham earned a total prize of $150,000, which he collected prize last week.

The chances of matching all four Virginia Lottery numbers in exact order are slim — one in 10,000.

But, remarkably, this isn’t the first time Bickham has tried and succeeded at this strategy.

Virginia Lottery said in a Wednesday news release that Bickham did the same thing in May last year, using identical combinations on 25 winning tickets in the same drawing.

That time, he won $125,000.

Reflecting on the most recent win, Bickham told lottery officials: “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!'”

He said he intends to save his winnings and perhaps use some to do travel, Virginia Lottery said.

Though Bickham’s strategy relied on a helping of good fortune, some mathematicians claim there are ways to hack the system.

Last month, Business Insider’s Mia Jankowicz reported on how British mathematicians worked out that buying 27 tickets guarantees a win in the UK’s National Lottery.

However, while it guarantees a win, it doesn’t necessarily mean participants would get a big enough prize to cover the cost of the tickets.

Another mathematician, who won 14 times and retired on a remote tropical island, developed a six-step formula for winning big.

While his scheme was legal at the time, new laws in the US wand Australia render it impossible nowadays, BI reported.

Read the original article on Business Insider