Thomas Grimme, from White Rock in British Columbia has become one of the very few people to have won a $400,000 lottery prize with the Washington Lottery which typically only pays out $10,000 prizes. Grimme, purchased 40 Match 4 tickets at the Cost Cutter Grocery which is located in Blaine, choosing the same four numbers on all of them which were: 4, 8, 17 and 24. This meant that when those four numbers were drawn, each one of his tickets was worth $10,000 – something that statistician views as a phenomenon as the chance of this happening was around 1 in 10,600 chances. However, in addition to this, Christian Hansen, a professor and department chairman of Eastern Washington University's Mathematics Department stated that he doesn't understand why Grimme purchased 40 tickets with the same four numbers, as the odds for him winning were the same had he bought 1 ticket or 40. Usually, lottery players try to pick different numbers when purchasing multiple lottery tickets as this generally improves odds, had Grimme chosen this technique his chances of winning would have been greatly improved to 1 in 250 chances of winning a prize. An investigator found out that Grimme chose his numbers based on his children's birthdays and had chosen to buy a few extra tickets after receiving money from a relative for several months. Within three months, he had spent $8,250 on Match 4 tickets, sometimes even buying 2 tickets in one day playing the same numbers. Grimme would likely to maintain his privacy, and therefore hasn't disclosed personal plans on how he is going to spend the winnings.