Chase the Ace in Sydney will resume with new tickets, close monitoring

One week after the province's gaming division put the Sydney Chase the Ace on hold to iron out its ticket problems, organizers say they will be back March 26 with a new ticket supplier and an accounting firm to make sure there are no duplicates. 

During the last draw on March 12, two ticket-holders come forward with the winning number. When they didn't draw the ace, the charities running the draw forfeited the money they made that week so both winners could each take home the weekly prize.

Organizers blamed the problem on a printing error that produced duplicate tickets. They say important changes have now been made.

"Some of those changes include working with a new custom order ticket supplier as well as working with a national accounting firm that will work in tandem with our new ticket supplier to ensure that no duplicates are given to us," said organizer Stephen Tobin. 

"Also, we're going to be taking some very large steps internally from a security standpoint to ensure that we have some unique identification methods in place that will ensure that no fraudulent activity takes place."

More security

The new tickets contain seven digits instead of the usual six.

"The additional number gives us approximately an additional 40 million possibilities." said Tobin, "because there's 10 million tickets for each colour, so that, in and of itself, is going to reduce the possibility and the potential for duplicates."

He says organizers are anticipating ticket sales to rise and there will be more policing and security in place. 

The long Easter weekend is expected to draw even more interest.

"We've had busloads of people coming from off-island," said Tobin. "Even at our last draw, we had several buses coming from Pictou County, from Port Hawkesbury, and recently we've heard there's buses coming from Halifax." 

The Horizon Achievement Centre and the Ashby Legion sponsor the event. 

Tobin had previously said they had already printed, bundled and prepared the equivalent of $2 million worth of tickets for future weekends. Each individual ticket sells for $1; they are bought in strips of five or more.

There are now nine cards left in the draw and it's expected the jackpot will be more than $1.3 million.

Tickets will be sold for four hours Saturday afternoon at eight locations around Sydney.