Hay River curling club the real winner in Chase the Ace lottery

Les Ring of Hay River, N.W.T., may have won about half a million dollars last Friday but the community's curling club walked away the big winner of its Chase the Ace lottery.

Ring drew the ace of spades, winning the $463,079 jackpot, but over the course of nearly 11 months of weekly drawsthe curling club grossed more than $700,000.

• 'My legs were shaking': Hay River's Les Ring wins $500K Chase the Ace jackpot

After expenses, such as licensing, and donations to other groups including $80,000 to the new recreation centre, the club has raised about $600,000 toward its space in the new rec centre.

"You never know when that ace of spades could be pulled. We beat the odds," said the club's fundraising chair Glenn Smith.

A coffee can and a deck of cards

When the group held the first draw Friday, Jan. 15, they budgetedto make less than $5,000 off it.

"We started off with a coffee can and grabbed a deck of cards off the shelf at the curling club, wrapped up a box in paper to do the draw in and off we went," he said.

One person, oftenSmith, would go around the club selling tickets.

In Chase the Ace, tickets are sold for a weekly raffle. The holder of that week's winning ticket wins 20 per cent of ticket sales for that week and a chance to draw the ace of spades from the deck. If the ace isn't drawn, 30 per cent of that week's sales are added to therolling jackpot.

As the jackpot climbed, the weekly event grew, drawing people from around the territory and eventually spurring airlines to offer charter flights on Fridays to the South Slave community.

• Businesses getting in on the game with Hay River's Chase the Ace

By November, the club needed more than 40 people on Friday nights to handle thehour-and-a-half ticket sale rushat six venues, and the club wasdoing itsdraws live on Facebook video.

Too big?

With the ever-growingticket demand,the club didn't know if itcould continue to handle the event's growth.Theydecided thatthe last drawwould be Nov. 18.

So for Smith,Ring's win on Nov. 4 was both a shock and a relief.

"That's it;it's over," he said. "And someone walks home with half a million dollars."

Despite the headaches of logistics, Smith said the communityhelped the events havea "great atmosphere, a social atmosphere" witha busy downtown core and lots of positive excitement at the draws themselves.

"It worked out quite well for us, more than we could have expected," he said.

"There's a lot of luck and a lot of management and a lot of things that need to go right to see it be that profitable."

And he's happy the money stayed in Hay River.

"They're long-time members of the community, so we know it went to Hay River, someone local, and to a good family that'ssupported many nonprofit groups within the community for many years," he said.