What makes folks chase the ace? The big draw may not be the big draw

If you were one of the tens of thousands of people who flocked to the Goulds neighbourhood of St. John's each Thursday in the summer of 2017 to play Chase the Ace, a Memorial University psychologist wants to know what drove you there.

(Not literally, of course — though many people did drive in from all over the province and play from their decked-out RVs.)

"I think it's really interesting and it's kind of come out of nowhere, particular in Atlantic Canada," Nick Harris, a MUN psychologist who specializes in behavioural addictions, told CBC's On The Go.

He and his team just finished collecting data for a new study looking at the game and its players, in an effort to figure out what made all those people make like Lemmy and chase the ace of spades.

They put out a survey aimed at Chase the Ace players and got about 275 responses from people with varying dedication to the game. Judging from the responses, there were three main reasons people threw their money down for a chance to pick a card and flip over the dark, solitary ace.

Turns out, the main draw wasn't necessarily the draw itself.

1. It's a chance to party

Chase the Ace was a deadly party for most of the people who played the Goulds game. 

People living in the houses near St. Kevin's Parish threw parties — word on the street was that 81-year-old Peg Frizzell held legendary potlucks each week — and people in the crowds outside the hall dressed up in costumes, danced and whooped as they waited to hear if they were holding the ticket to future fortune.

That kind of fun, said Harris, was a big reason many of the respondents played the game.

2. It's a chance to be rich

Heck yeah there was money — lots of it. Marge and Don Gorman took home $2.6 million from the Goulds bonanza, Donelda MacAskill took home $1.7 million in Inverness, N.S., and Mary Milley took home $175,000 this summer in Mount Pearl.

People were playing to win, Harris said. And though the odds of winning were still intergalacticly huge, they were better than the odds of winning the lottery.

3. It's a chance to bond

People said it brought them together, Harris said. Ticket and car pooling, buying tickets for friends and having friends buy tickets for them — it all gave people a reason to bond with their family and their colleagues.

Mostly, anyway. There was that case in Margaree Forks, N.S., where an aunt took her nephew to court over a $1.2 million win. 

• 'Dead to me': Aunt's feud with nephew over $1.2M Chase the Ace win hasn't cooled

But is it a chance for problem gambling?

"Compared to other types of gambling, people perceive this very differently. They didn't necessarily see it as a gambling activity, they saw it as a social activity," he said. They also saw it as a way to raise money for a charity or organization, he said.

But, of course, it is gambling, no matter how many millions were raised for a local church. There are a lot of similarities to traditional gambling games, like the built-in reward system, the anticipation, the excitement and the fun. 

And sure enough, it did wind up causing some problems: eight per cent of the survey respondents said they'd spent more than they'd intended, or more than they could afford, he said.

Harris said he and his team will be analyzing the data more over the coming months and hope to present at a few conferences after the spring and eventually publish a paper.

He also said that though he has never played Chase the Ace and was therefore disqualified from taking his own survey, he has attended a couple draws in New Brunswick and he attended for reason the third reason: bonding with his brother-in-law.

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