Queen of Hearts game has been a lucky draw for McHenry VFW

Every Tuesday, Jackie Raycraft and a group of friends meet at the McHenry Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4600 for dinner, drinks and to try their hand at winning what often is the largest Queen of Hearts games in McHenry County.

“For eight years, we have been here the whole time,” Raycraft said on a recent Tuesday, hoping that either the tickets she bought or that the table bought as a group would be pulled.

They don’t just go every week for the jackpots, which routinely reach more than $1 million.

“It is for the people,” Raycraft said.

The staff, the servers and the volunteers make it special for the group, several of whom are widows, she said.

It all started with [the] hopes of replacing a furnace.”

—  McHenry VFW 4600 Post Cmdr. Ben Keefe

The current pot is not one of the largest the VFW has ever had – it still is at less than $1 million with $864,630.

McHenry’s post is not the only nonprofit group that operates a Queen of Hearts game. But it may be one of the luckier ones, as its pots often grow for months without a big winner, post Cmdr. Ben Keefe said.

The largest pot ever was in 2018, when the game rolled over without a winner for almost two years and ended up topping $7 million.

For that game, hopefuls came from around the country to buy tickets. The post needed a police presence to manage the event, and four broadcast news teams from Chicago showed up to cover the big drawing, Keefe said.

“We didn’t expect that to happen,” Keefe said of that jackpot and the attention it brought to the post. “It all started with [the] hopes of replacing a furnace.”

He said it may have been one of the largest Queen of Hearts games in the country. Because of the traffic it generated, the city made the post keep picking tickets, and cards, until a winner was declared the night of the big win.

The money raised on that game, the first the post had ever done, paid for the new furnace. Since then, funds raised by the game have been used to replace the building’s heating system, rebuild its parking lots for better traffic flow, update the beer garden, expand the restaurant and provide extensive donations to charitable veterans organizations, among many other projects, Keefe said.

Next, the plan is to update the banquet hall.

Raycraft and the 12 friends who usually sit together do their part to help increase the pot.

Sandy Donovan said she usually buys six tickets at $5 each.

“That is $30 times 52″ over the past eight years, not including when the VFW closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neither is the Queen of Hearts the only gaming at the post. There is a pull-tab vending machine and a 50/50 Blue Raffle. In that game, also pulled every Tuesday, each ticket can win up to $500.

It’s not uncommon for the game to have multiple tickets pulled for $500 each, with the VFW keeping the same amount for its programs.

Raycraft and Donovan’s table has won the Blue Raffle three times in eight years, Donovan said, and one of the group’s tickets has been pulled for the big game twice. Each time they picked the wrong card out of the deck and didn’t win the pot, but won $500 for having their ticket pulled.

Last year, the pot reached $2.4 million before the queen of hearts was drawn May 9.

The payout limit now sits at $3 million, according to McHenry city ordinance. That means the pot can reach $6 million – because the winner receives half of the pot – but when that happens, tickets are pulled from the hopper until the envelope with the queen of hearts inside is selected.

The VFW also has made changes to the game to help the veterans group continue to raise money while tamping down some huge jackpots. Instead of volunteers selling rows of raffle tickets, they have raffle ticket vending machines that take cash only.

From 2016 to 2018, they sold six tickets for $5. Now the tickets are $5 each.

Also, instead of 60% of the pot, the winner now gets 50% if the queen of hearts is picked. An additional 40% goes back to the VFW, and 10% is set aside for the next pot.

That’s where some of the luck comes in, Keefe said. Because the pots have grown so large, it means they have a larger number to start the next game with.

To keep interest going when months can go by without a winner, the post has payouts for anyone who picks a queen, not just the queen of hearts, Keefe said.

Pulling a joker also can get the lucky winner 5% of the pot. If both jokers are picked over the course of the game, it is reset with a new deck of 54 cards.

That’s what happened Feb. 13. The person whose ticket was pulled selected card No. 38 – the joker – winning $42,557.

On Tuesday, the ticket holder drawn picked card No. 46, which ended up being the three of hearts. There are now 53 cards to choose from.

“We will go until the queen of hearts is pulled or we hit a $6 million total pot,” Keefe said.