A festival crowd in Waterloo will see the Queen of Hearts crown a $500,000 winner Tuesday

Joshua Carter
·2 min read

After months of withstanding rain, cold and freezing temperatures, Waterloo’s locally famous Queen of Hearts tournament will have a winner this week.

As of the most recent drawing, which was weeks ago due to the dangerous cold temperatures and wintry precipitation, the lottery was up to $458,423 and expected to increase by the final round. In January of last year, a retired iron worker from Red Bud drew the Queen of Hearts to win a jackpot of about $1.9 million.

There won’t be a millionaire winner this year, however since Raffle organizers have capped the jackpot at $500,000.

Proceeds raised by the Queen of Hearts raffle benefits Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School. This is how the game works:

  • Players have to be pre-registered in order to purchase weekly raffle tickets for $1 each. Registrations this year closed on Oct. 24 as part of the effort to cap the winnings and control the weekly crowds that assemble in downtown Waterloo.

  • If the number on your raffle ticket is called, you win the chance to pull a card from the deck of 52 attached individually on a large board.

  • Any card picked except the Queen of Hearts is removed from the game and raffle tickets are sold for another week, which enlarges the jackpot.

  • Whoever draws the Queen of Hearts wins the jackpot.

  • You don’t have to be present to win if your raffle number is drawn. However, a game moderator will pick a playing card for you and if the Queen of Hearts is selected, you only win half of the jackpot and the other half goes toward building the next jackpot.

  • Since the jackpot has reached its cap limit, raffle tickets will be drawn Tuesday until someone claims the big prize.

  • Saints Peter and Paul keeps 20% of the ticket sales in addition to holding a weekly 50-50 raffle.

The drawing takes place promptly at 7 p.m. outside the Outsider Pub at 104 S. Market St. in Waterloo. The event has drawn crowds approaching 1,000 people each week since the raffles inception.

Parking is difficult and arriving half an hour early is advisable due to the sheer number of attendees. The bar’s parking lot is repurposed into a patio, where participants and observers crowd, while the rest spill out into the street and onto the Monroe County courthouse lawn across the street.

Drinks are served at the bar’s entrance and from within. Some bring chairs while others crowd in the street, beer in hand.

Following last year’s Queen of Hearts raffle, Saints Peter and Paul announced a net profit of $705,253.50 with “roughly 19%” going towards school operations. The rest, according to the school, went to updating facilities and infrastructure.

Local business owners in the downtown area say Waterloo ‘”loves Tuesdays” because of the crowds the Queen of Hearts brings.