Catch the Ace - FAQ
Envelopes do not belong to one person, they are available for selection by hundreds or even thousands of buyers. You do not purchase an envelope number, you simply select one along with others.
ONLY the one draw winner picks an envelope and ONLY the one winner can win the jackpot. He/she has their envelope opened, if it is the Ace of Spades, they win the jackpot, if it is not, that envelope number is retired from play and there is one less envelope in next week’s draw.
To make it clearer perhaps, for example, let’s say the first draw sells 1,000 tickets. It is possible, but unlikely that all ticket holders could choose the same envelope number. The ticket drawn indicates the holder had chosen envelope 4. Upon revealing envelope 4, it shows the Queen of Hearts. The ticket holder will win the weekly prize and will not win the grand prize because it is not the Ace of Spades. Envelope 4 gets retired, and envelopes 1 to 3 and 5 to 52 remain. Other ticket holders not chosen do not win a prize.
It is irrelevant how many people select the same envelope number, again, it only matters to the one person whose ticket is drawn, ONLY that one person can win the jackpot. Those are the rules as specified by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.
The email receipts are automatically issued by Stripe. There are three reasons purchasers are not receiving their email receipts:
- The most common reason (75% of the time) is the notification is in their spam folder,
- They entered their email incorrectly, therefore, are not notified; and,
- The email was sent to their server but the purchaser’s server rejected the email receipt due to their security settings or their provider’s settings. This is not a problem with our website, it is in your personal settings.
You do not require a receipt to win, everything is captured on our servers.
However, if you want to check, please send us an email at our help desk at SSVPcta@gmail.com and we can verify your purchases; if you do so please indicate that you have already checked your spam folder (with thousands of tickets being purchased every week it can be time consuming on our volunteers), your name on the tickets and when you purchased them. We will send an email back verifying your data and also confirming your envelope choices.
If you absolutely require a receipt, for example as a gift etc., please send us an email exactly as above, indicating you have already checked your spam folder, your name on the tickets and when you purchased them and that you require a receipt. It will be forwarded to you again.
The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario’s lottery rules clearly state that tickets can only be purchased within the Province of Ontario. If you are visiting Ontario, you are eligible to play as long as the ticket(s) are purchased at the time you are physically within the province.
However, if you are in Ontario and using a computer/device/service provider from outside the Province of Ontario, our geo location software may indicate you are not in the Province.
As well, we are finding that some of the computers/devices in the greater Ottawa area are routed through a Quebec based IP address, or their ‘new’ ISP is not providing a valid IP address, thereby indicating you are not within the province; and some security software may redirect your internet traffic to a different IP address, in which case you may need to pause that feature when buying tickets.
You may check where your device is routed through https://whatismyipaddress.com/
If this is the case, we offer you the following options to purchase tickets;
- Reboot your device as it probably contains history/cache with out of province connections.
- Allow/show your device’s location.
- Follow the instructions on our Location Troubleshooting folder Location Troubleshooting
- Finally, if none of these solutions work, please email us at SSVPcta@gmail.com with the caption/subject line PURCHASE…someone will contact you shortly (9am-7pm) to assist with your online purchase.
We monitor our emails very regularly. Contact us for Catch the Ace HelpDesk requirements at SSVPcta@gmail.com
Contact us for regular communications at SSVPcta@gmail.com
Only the remaining available envelope numbers appear when ordering tickets online. You must select an envelope number for each ticket purchased. You may select different envelope numbers, or the same envelope number for multiple purchases. It is only the one ticket drawn from the raffle bin that counts.
You can make your purchase of multiple tickets with multiple envelope choices in one transaction.
Please see our brief Catch the Ace Lottery tutorial on purchasing tickets at https://youtu.be/RSQIOBXA6Zk
Catch the Ace is a progressive lottery.
We start by shuffling the 52 cards of a playing deck, placing them backs up so we cannot see the cards, then sliding each one into its own envelope, again, without viewing them. The envelopes are then sealed, re-shuffled, then we number the sealed envelopes from 1 – 52. We do not know what cards are in which envelopes.
Tickets are sold both online and in paper ticket formats. The buyer enters their name, phone number and envelope choice. Online ticket stubs and paper ticket stubs are the exact same size, colour, stock and weight. All tickets purchased between 5 PM Monday and 11:59pm the next Sunday are placed into the raffle bin.
Each week, we conduct a draw of all tickets purchased that week (tickets are good for only the one week of the draw) at 11:00 AM at the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul store at 1620 Merivale Road in Ottawa. Only one ticket is drawn from the raffle bin.
That one winner, wins 20% of the total sales for that week or basically $2.00 for every ticket sold. 30% of the sales (or $3 for each ticket sold) every week are put towards the progressive jackpot.
ONLY the one draw winner picks an envelope and ONLY the one winner can win the jackpot. He/she has their chosen envelope opened, if it is the Ace of Spades, they win the jackpot, if it is not, that envelope number is retired from play and there is one less envelope in next week’s draw.
It is irrelevant how many people select the same envelope number, again, it only matters to the one person whose ticket is drawn, ONLY that one person can win the jackpot. The lottery continues each week until the Ace of Spades is selected by the raffle draw winner.