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- Maths reviewed by Josh Miller
- Tested by Diana Westfield
Chase the ace is a weekly raffle with a deck of cards stapled to it, and it’s one of the best fundraisers going. Each week a ticket is drawn, the winner takes a slice of that week’s sales and picks one of the sealed envelopes on the board. Ace of spades? They win the jackpot, which has been growing all along. Any other card is shown, taken out, and the game rolls on with one fewer envelope. The free CasinoCalcs calculator shows the odds for this week’s draw and what your tickets are worth with the jackpot as it stands.
Chase the ace odds, week by week
The ace is equally likely to be in any envelope, so the chance it turns up in any one draw is 1 divided by the envelopes left. Week one, 1 in 52. Halfway through, with 26 left, 1 in 26. With four left it’s 1 in 4, and the room is packed. On average a 52-card game finds the ace somewhere around week 26 or 27, but plenty end in the first month and a few go almost the whole year.
Your own chance has two parts. First your ticket has to be drawn: 10 tickets out of 3,000 sold is 1 in 300. Then the envelope has to be the ace. With 18 left, that’s 1 in 18, so together it’s 1 in 5,400 this week. The calculator does that for any numbers.
When a ticket is worth buying
Early on, chase the ace tickets are mostly a donation. Late in the game, with the jackpot in five figures and a dozen envelopes left, the numbers move. Say the jackpot is £12,000, 18 envelopes remain, 3,000 tickets are sold at £2 and the draw winner gets 20% of the week’s £6,000. A single ticket is drawn 1 in 3,000 times, and when it is, it’s worth £1,200 plus a 1 in 18 shot at £12,000, about £1,867 on average. Divide by 3,000 and a £2 ticket is worth roughly 62p. Halve the envelopes and double the jackpot and it’s a different story, which is exactly when sales explode and the per-ticket value drops again.
Chase the ace rules worth checking
Rules differ from club to club. Some pay a small prize for the other aces or the jokers, some take a share of every week’s sales into the jackpot and some into a seed fund for the next game, and some need the winner to be present for the envelope pick. Put the jokers in by changing the deck size, and the weekly share under “More options”. For simpler draws, the raffle odds calculator and the 50/50 draw calculator cover the rest of a fundraising night.