After 3 years, nearly $250K Chase the Ace cash pot in The Pas will have a winner this Saturday

A pot of money in a weekly draw that has waited unclaimed for three years — and has now grown to nearly a quarter of a million dollars — will soon be won in the northern Manitoba town of The Pas.

The long-running Chase the Ace contest hosted by the local Royal Canadian Legion Branch has only one card remaining — meaning someone is guaranteed to win the $245,878 prize during this Saturday's draw.

"Whoever gets called is winning at all," said Angie Nikolychuk, president of the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 19. "Everybody's nervous."

Chase the Ace contests involve drawing one ticket weekly. The selected ticket holder then gets to choose a card from a standard deck of 52 playing cards. If they draw the ace of hearts, they win the pot.

But if there's no winner, the pot keeps growing.

This current prize was initially put up for grabs in January 2020, and started at $17,000.

However, due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the event was paused in March that year, and didn't start up again until the beginning of 2022.

A little more than a year later, the game comes down to a "winner takes all" draw this weekend.

The pot isn't actually the largest in the legion's Chase the Ace game. In 2018, a Flin Flon man walked away with $1,009,870.

The final draw was such a huge event that The Pas legion branch rented out the town's Roy H. Johnston Arena to fit in all the people who wanted a chance at the pot.

Though only a quarter of the 2018 amount, the excitement for this Saturday's draw is still high enough that Nikolychuk has needed to bring in extra help.

"With the lineups that have been out there, I've had to recruit a lot of help," she said.

She has 61 volunteers lined up to help this weekend with things like running the canteen.

"We've had to bring in security door people and stuff like that," said Nikolychuk. 

Up to 420 people could pack the legion hall, which means it could get pretty chaotic when the number is drawn, she said.

"Once we draw the ticket … you only have five minutes to get up to the stage," said Nikolychuk. "So people are just scrambling, looking through their tickets for the numbers, stuff like that."

Close but not quite

During last weekend's draw, Brad Sanderson of The Pas experienced first-hand the pressure that comes with picking a card from the deck, after his ticket number was drawn.

"It was like it was a dream," he said. "It was surreal — I felt like my body was on autopilot walking up there, picking the card. It was just unbelievable.

Out of the two remaining cards, Sanderson did grab an ace — but it was the ace of clubs, not hearts.

Even though he didn't win the big pot, Sanderson said he is still in good spirits, winning a split pot of $16,368.

"It didn't matter whether I won the big amount or the small amount, because they're both extremely large amounts," he said. "So I walked away super, super happy."

Sanderson said he has no plans to spend his share on anything big, and that it'll more than likely go toward bills.

The winner of big Chase the Ace pot will be picked at 9 p.m. Saturday, with the event being livestreamed on the legion branch's Facebook page.