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Anticipation builds for Queen of Hearts drawing at Crickets bar
By Sarah Lehr
YOUNGSTOWN
Anticipation is building for a Queen of Hearts drawing Monday at Crickets Bar, 1733 E. Midlothian Blvd.
The jackpot has reached more than $200,000, according to Crickets general manager Amanda Piatt.
A Queen of Hearts raffle involves a deck of 52 cards placed face-down on a board. The object is to have your ticket drawn and to select a Queen of Hearts from the board. If someone hits another card, that card is eliminated, and the game continues minus one card until the Queen of Hearts comes up.
Crickets has a Queen of Hearts drawing at 8 p.m. each Monday, and the board is now down to just seven cards. It costs $5 to enter the Queen of Hearts drawing, and there is no limit on the number of tickets one person can buy. Many people buy multiple tickets to increase their chances.
Renee Sympson of New Middletown never misses a Queen of Hearts drawing. She shares a table with her extended family, and they all wave plastic wands with hearts at the end for good luck.
Although she wouldn’t mind winning, Sympson said she comes for the festive atmosphere.
“You meet a lot of great people,” Sympson said. “It’s a lot of excitement.”
If a Queen of Hearts winner is at Crickets in person, he or she will collect 100 percent of the jackpot. If the winner is not on the premises, he or she will collect 50 percent of the winnings.
The winnings will be delivered via check, not cash.
There are also smaller drawings, which ensure that some amount of money will be given out each Monday. If the person with the first ticket drawn selects a Joker or a Queen that is not the Queen of Hearts, that person will win 10 percent of the jackpot if he or she is there in person. The owners of the next five tickets drawn will each receive $100 each.
Crickets also will have a separate 50-50 raffle at $1 per ticket. The winner will collect 50 percent of that jackpot, and the rest will go to Golden String radio, a local station run by adults with disabilities.
Last Monday, the games drew a crowd of about 1,000 people, Piatt said. Since the Crickets interior can hold only about 100 people, patrons also gather on the patio, under a tent outside and in the parking lot.
The Crickets parking lot usually fills up with cars hours before the 8 p.m. Queen of Hearts drawing.
On Monday, Crickets will provide busing for customers from additional parking lots at the Embassy Banquet Centre, 5030 Youngstown-Poland Road, Giannios Candy, 430 Youngstown-Poland Road, and Utopia Video Night Club, 876 E. Midlothian Blvd. Buses will take people from those lots to Crickets from 4 to 10 p.m.
Crickets will be using four of its own employees for security, along with five off-duty Youngstown police officers.
There also will be live music Monday and food from Donavito’s Italian Grille.
Another Mahoning Valley bar is no stranger to Queen of Hearts-related chaos.
For several months in 2015, thousands of people flocked to Barry Dyngles Pub on Raccoon Road in Austintown each week as the jackpot grew to a whopping $1.8 million that a Warren woman eventually took home. The game had gone on for more than a year.
As the game grew in popularity and the jackpot increased, the bar had to take some extra measures to manage the event. There were times when part of Raccoon Road was shut down. The pub hired off-duty police officers for security.
Reached by The Vindicator this week, William Happney, a manager at the pub, said a key to the event’s success was that Austintown officials were supportive and helpful.
“Go to your city, your council,” he encouraged other businesses with a similar issue. “The community is getting involved at that point.”
Barry Dyngles also tried to be a good neighbor, Happney said. Staff members would walk down Raccoon Road during and after the drawings to collect trash, for example. Happney said the pub also tried to confine parking so that other businesses in the area would not be adversely affected.
But, he said, it seemed that other businesses benefited from the increased traffic.
Overall, Happney said he thinks the events were beneficial to Barry Dyngles and to the community as a whole.
“It gave people an eye for a small business owned in Austintown,” he said. “Ever since, we’ve had a lot of loyalty come back from the Queen of Hearts.”