St. Francis Valley Healthcare Foundation's Catch the Ace

What is Catch the Ace? 

Catch the Ace is a progressive lottery. We start by shuffling the 52 cards of a playing deck, placing them back side up so we cannot see the cards, then sliding each one into its own envelope, again, without viewing them. The envelopes are then sealed, re-shuffled, then we number the sealed envelopes from 1 – 52. We do not know what cards are in which envelopes. Tickets are sold both online and in paper ticket formats. The buyer enters their name, phone number and envelope choice. Online ticket stubs and paper ticket stubs are the exact same size, colour, stock and weight. All tickets purchased between 4:30 PM Thursday and approximately 3:30 p.m. the next Thursday (online tickets sales cease at 11:59 PM Wednesday) are placed into the raffle bin.

Each week, we conduct a draw of all tickets purchased that week (tickets are good for only the one week of the draw) at 4:00 PM at St. Francis Memorial Hospital located at 7 St. Francis Memorial Drive. Only one ticket is drawn from the raffle bin. That one winner, wins 20% of the total sales for that week or basically $2.00 for every ticket sold. 30% of the sales every week are put towards the progressive jackpot.

Only the one draw winner picks an envelope and only the one winner can win the jackpot. Their chosen envelope is opened, and if it is the Ace of Spades, they win the jackpot. If it is not, that envelope number is retired from play and there is one less envelope in next week’s draw.

It is irrelevant how many people select the same envelope number, again, it only matters to the one person whose ticket is drawn, only that one person can win the jackpot. The lottery continues each week until the Ace of Spades is selected by the raffle draw winner.