Queen of Hearts drawing nearing $800K in Aviston

Thousands of people are filling the American Legion Hall in Aviston, Illinois, for a shot at hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Wednesday night is the night for a 'Queen of Hearts' drawing, where people have been lining up here since 2 p.m.

And in this city of 2,000 people, nearly 10,000 have registered to participate in this drawing. We're told the fire department made the American Legion cut off registration because too many people were signing up.

The pot tonight will likely be more than $800,000 when all of the tickets are sold. And just one ticket will be drawn.

This has been going on every week since January. The legion here draws one ticket every Wednesday and that person selects a card from the deck of cards. If that card is the queen of hearts, that person wins the pot.

After all these months no one has won, so the pot just keeps growing and growing with more ticket sales.

The veterans in charge of this post are grateful for the support and the money they're making on this, but they're also tired. They never expected it to go on this long.

"It's a good thing, it's a great thing for the legion and for the community,” said Vinnie Barciszewski, the assistant bar chairman of the American Legion post. “But yea, you've been doing this since January every week that you're here spending time that you'd like to be spending with your family or somebody else."

Vinnie said he is really hoping someone wins that pot tonight. The post here gets 20 percent of ticket sales and they also make money on food and drink sales. They say they're going to use all of that to pay for a handicap-accessible ramp.

The drawing is tonight at 8 p.m.

The normal parking on the fields across from the VFW hall will not be available Wednesday night. They will be offering shuttles to and from the hall every 15 minutes from 5:30 to 7:30 then after the drawing at 9:15. The pick-up locations are: