ELDRED – A patron to American Legion Post #1135 in Eldred may become $250,000 richer Tuesday night through the establishment's Queen of Hearts drawing.
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The drawing features ticket sales for $1 each and has been going since Nov. 7. Each week, a name is drawn and a card is drawn. The person whose name is drawn gets the amount of cash signified by the card. If the Queen of Hearts is drawn, however, that person wins the entire pot. As of now, 35 cards have been drawn over the course of 37 weeks from a deck of 54 cards (the usual plus two jokers). Now, with only 19 cards left, American Legion Post #1135 Commander Jon Baker said things are heating up.
“Nobody has got the Queen out of any of those,” he said. “Whoever gets drawn tonight will get at least $250. That's the smallest card amount we have left. They could also get a percentage of the pot. It all depends on which card is drawn.”
Tickets are going to be on sale at the legion, located at 305 Locust Street, until 6 p.m. Tuesday with the drawing at 7 p.m. If the Queen of Hearts is not drawn from the increasingly small stack of cards, then the drawings will continue and the pot will get larger.
“Come to the post and buy tickets,” Baker said. “Buy as many as you want.”
This is the first year the American Legion Post #1135 is doing this drawing, but Baker said he has seen it done at several other legions, including in Caseyville where he said the pot grew to more than $400,000 at the time the Queen of Hearts was drawn.
If she is not drawn tonight, the Eldred American Legion may reach an even higher number. With the frenzy of a growing pot and a shrinking deck, Baker said $40,000 worth of tickets were sold last week. As much as 20 percent of that money goes directly toward the American Legion Post #1135.
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