You may find your “pot of gold” in the first H-F community Queen of Hearts game. The prize is up to $10,100 and growing.
Queen of Hearts raffles have taken off in other communities, and this first one here is picking up interest, said Terry Keigher, a member of the H-F Fine and Performing Arts Council, one of three organizations that will benefit from the game.
Keigher said the pot is growing because “the Queen of Hearts did not show herself, so we rollover for another week.” The drawing on Oct. 31 will be the eighth of the game.
“This is the only raffle that I have attended where everyone cheers when there is no winner,” said Mary Lou Coleman of the H-F Foundation, one of the organizers.
Tickets are on sale in $5 increments. For $5, a participant will get six chances to win. The Queen of Hearts raffle puts the 54 cards in a deck, including the two Jokers, onto a board face down in no particular order. Then the cards are numbered 1-54.
With every chance, a purchaser gets to write a number between 1 and 54 on the ticket. That ticket goes into a drum. If the ticket is selected, the number on the ticket is matched with the card number on the deck of cards on the board. If the Queen of Hearts is turned over, there is a lucky winner.
If there is no winner, ticket sales begin anew for the next week’s drawing.
This game is sponsored by three local organizations: the Homewood-Flossmoor High School Foundation, which helps underwrite various student extracurricular activities at H-F; the H-F Fine and Performing Arts Council, which is supporting the choir’s spring trip to Italy; and the Flossmoor Service League, a volunteer organization assisting those in need.
Drawings are at 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Wiley’s Grill at Coyote Run, 800 Kedzie Ave. in Flossmoor. The winner will get half of the winnings. The other half will be divided by the three organizations.
The winner need not be present. Each person whose ticket is pulled for the week and is present at the drawing gets a $50 prize. Tickets are sold any time Wiley’s is open, up to 30 minutes before that week’s number is pulled.
Although the game is intended to be played over 52 weeks, this Queen of Hearts game has a 120-day license from the Village of Flossmoor. If the queen isn’t picked by mid-December, the final game will continue until the queen of hearts card is drawn, Keigher explained.