McHenry’s Queen Of Hearts Raffle Is Returning With Some Changes

The raffle that made someone a millionaire last year is returning at the end of the month with some rule changes. 

Last year the pot grew to over $7 million and the McHenry VFW made national news. People waited for hours in line to get a chance at the jackpot.

Before we get to changes, here's how the raffle used to work.

For 5 bucks, you got 6 tickets. Each week they would pick one ticket. That person got to pick a card from the display on the wall. At the start of the raffle there were 54 cards. If you picked the queen of hearts you won. If you didn't, the pot rolled over and that card was removed from the display.. Well last year no one found the queen of hearts until there were only a few card remaining and that's what caused the record jackpot.

The McHenry VFW, for some reason, wants to make it a little easier to win this year with two main changes. One tickets will just be $5 a piece. That makes sense. You're probably going to make the same amount of money but only have to use a fraction of the tickets. That was one of the problems last year, finding a barrel big enough to hold all the sold tickets. The other change is a big one. Instead of starting with 54 cards, they will only start with 22. This will whittle down the number of cards quicker and make it easier to win. Again, they made millions last year, I'm not really sure why they wanted to change it. Maybe people were uncomfortable with the huge amount of cash that was on hand? That's my only guess.

The exact start of the new raffle is unannounced but organizers hope to have it running by the end of the month.