(Cleveland) – If you feel lucky, check out a raffle going on at the Grayton Road Tavern on Cleveland’s west side. Wednesday night’s jackpot in the bar’s weekly Queen of Hearts game has risen to $610,000.
Here’s how the game works. A full deck of 54 playing cards (including both jokers) is turned upside down and taped to a board, which is locked up. Each card is numbered 1-54. Players buy raffle tickets, on which they put their name, phone number, and the number of one of the cards. If your raffle ticket is drawn, the bar will turn over the playing card with the number chosen on it. If the card is turned over, and it’s the Queen of Hearts, you win 90% of the jackpot (the rest goes into the next game). If it’s any other card, the game continues for another week, with one less card to draw from. That week’s jackpot, if it’s not won, all goes into next week’s jackpot.
Lines of people waiting to buy and fill out tickets in the raffle have stretched out the door of the Grayton Road Tavern, and so many tickets have been sold, that the bar has had to buy a larger hopper for the tickets.
It’s believed this is the largest Queen of Hearts jackpot in the Cleveland area, but it doesn’t compare with one in 2016 at a bar in the Youngstown area, where the jackpot made it up to $1.8 million, and one last year at a Garrettsville bowling alley, where the jackpot rose to $3.4 million.
Tickets for the Queen of Hearts game at Grayton Road Tavern are $1 each, are sold until 7:15 p.m. each Wednesday, and the drawing is at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
(Photo by Ray Davis/WTAM 1100)