Thrill of the chase the ace: What are your chances?
All the fuss and, for some, all the travel for what could be a $300,000 chase the ace jackpot in Bay de Verde might make you wonder: is it worth the trouble?
Memorial University statistics professor Zhaozhi Fan says your odds are at least better than winning Lotto 6/49 — but still not great.
He said you need to clear two hurdles to win: be selected to draw the card, and then actually pulling that precious ace of spades from the deck.
Based on Wednesday night's attendance and sales at Bay de Verde, Fan calculated a person's odds of winning the jackpot at one in 42,000, although buying more tickets improve your odds — while increasing your investment.
"I would say, as a statistician, it's almost impossible" said Fan.
"I'm not a lucky person to win anything, whatever prize like that. The biggest prize I won, many years ago, was a pack of cookies. I spent a few dollars and got a pack of cookies."
Fan has no plans to drive to Bay de Verde to try to win next Wednesday's jackpot, but he adds your chances of catching the ace are good when compared to big-jackpot national lotteries.
"The probability of winning this jackpot is higher than winning a 6/49, of course," he said.
"The chance of winning the jackpot in 6/49 is one over 14 million. That's a much lower chance than this one."
Not a win-win for all charities
While eye-popping jackpots are in the offing for some chase the ace games — $327,000 in Lourdes, $200,000 and rising in Bay De Verde — it's not working for everyone.
A church in St. John's gave the fundraising method a try and it didn't work out as well, so they've given up on it completely.
Herb Stead, who volunteers at Corpus Christi Parish on Waterford Bridge Road, said there were high hopes for a chase the ace there.
"We were a little disappointed with the outcome of the first one," he said.
"We raised $5,000 for the church [but] it was a little bit long, dragged out in order to get it up to $5,000. We were hoping to go higher but that didn't happen."
When the church tried again, it raised only $4,800 — which is nothing to sniff at, but Stead said it took a long time to conduct the two lotteries and the return hardly seemed worth it.
Competing chase the ace lotteries
Stead said he's not sure why it didn't work, but added there were five or six other chase the ace lotteries around St. John's at the same time.
With those competing chase the ace events, Stead said they've gone a different route.
"Previous to chase the ace we had a fundraising event and we raised $48,000 on a ticket sweep so we decided, 'You know what?' We may just go back to the ticket sweep,'" he said.
"It's not long, dragged out, and that's why we went that way."
