So far Chase the Ace has created 2 new millionaires on Cape Breton Island. It's a pretty exciting time, and it seems many establishments would agree with me, with every Legion and boat club from here to New Glasgow having a Chase the Ace event once a week. I've even seen some Chinese restaurants getting in on the action.

And it's great, right? I mean, a few weeks ago an Alberta laborer won $3 million at the same time the province was burning to the ground. You couldn't hire Disney to write a more uplifting tearjerker.

Unfortunately, I'm about to do something stupid. See, while all this excitement was going on, it seems nobody was keeping track of the consequences of this hugely successful, windfall producing, Cape Breton inspired money-pit. Personally, I don't know where I stand, but I'm willing to give it some thought.

So here are some pro's and con's as I see them. As always, feel free to call me names in the comments.

Pro #1: It Raises a Boatload of Money for Charities

Fancy car not included.

The first pro is pretty straightforward. I challenge anyone to find a more effective fundraising method than Chase the Ace. The Inverness Chase the Ace, now a thing of legend, raised about $2.8 million for the Inverness Legion and Inverness Cottage Workshop. This is most likely more than the entire gross domestic product of Inverness. Also, the winning $1.7 million went to a woman with a husband fighting cancer. Why am I criticizing this again?

The more recent Sydney Chase the Ace raised an even more spectacular sum of almost $5 million for the Ashby Legion and the Horizon Achievement Centre. The picture above is Horizon's design for a new location near Open Hearth Park. As someone who has had the priviledge of touring the Horizon Achievement Centre, I can tell you that what they do there is beautiful, and they've been trying to raise the funds for a new location for years, making incremental progress, until a giant pile of money dropped in their laps.

Who could possibly criticize something that makes such amazing things happen? Well, me I guess...

Con #1: It's the only Way to Raise Money

Lively downtown Sydney.

There's no denying that these nonprofits would never have raised that amount of money without Chase the Ace. But if we're going to celebrate certain charities and nonprofits making millions of dollars at random increments, we also have to accept the fact that there are also many other charities and nonprofits that aren't. These giant windfalls are creating a "have and have-not" landscape for charities in Cape Breton, and at a pretty random pace, seeing as nobody can predict when one of these is going to blow up.

And it's not just charities. It's estimated that $10 million was spent on the Sydney Chase the Ace. How much disposable income do you think Cape Breton has? The median household income for this island is a little over $41,257. That's a total of 242 household incomes going to a fundraiser, on an island with a population a bit over 147,000 people.

I actually heard a rumour that The Mayflower Mall stopped selling Chase the Ace tickets because of rampant theft going on in their stores. I'm no expert on crime or anything, but when you're stealing jeans because you just spent all your money on dreams, it seems something is out balance.

I'm not saying the money is going to a bad place, but when our businesses can't keep their doors open, while a select few charities are rolling in dough, maybe it's time we rethink of our priorities.

Pro #2: It Brings in Outside Money

Can Paramount sue you if it's a metaphor?

Now the argument I just made isn't entirely accurate, so never trust me again. Not all of the $10 million dollars came from the pockets of Cape Bretoners. I think we all heard the stories of the towns in New Brunswick pooling money and sending one driver up to bulk buy tickets. I think some of the money came from as far away as Ontario. That's good news.

That money is going to be spent on local construction, employing nonprofit and charity workers, and probably a couple lunches at some point. This all contributes to the local economy, and what did New Brunswick and Ontario get in return for all those tickets they purchased? Absolutely nothing. Suckers!

At a time when it's getting more and more difficult to keep money from leaving this island, and most of the money coming in is from the government, it's awesome to see the mainland shoveling money at us, and then not picking their ticket every Friday.

Con #2: It Sugarcoats a Vice

Why would I sugarcoat that vice? Way too literal, Google image search.

Listen, I have no problem with vices. My personal vice comes in the form of a bottle of rum on Friday night. Here's the thing though; I can't buy my rum from the girl scouts and pretend like I'm contributing to a nonprofit. 

Vice, by its very nature, is indulging in the present, and paying in the future. When drinking, it comes in the form of a super fun Friday night, at the price of a super awful Saturday morning. It's an investment in your future misery.

And much like drinking, gambling is indulging in possibilities now, while having an empty wallet tomorrow.

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against gambling. I think allowing people to spend their own money however they want is a fundamental freedom of Western Civilization. I just think that if you're going to spend your money on irresponsible luxuries, there's got to be some equivalent exchange there.

In Chase the Ace there is not. You gamble, and when you lose, you feel good about donating to a charity. Even when you can't pay rent next week, you can feel great knowing the Horizon Achievement Centre can. 

You can gamble all you want. Just be real about it. It kind of feels like a weird sense of denial.

Pro #3: It's a Community Event

The legion hasn't been this popular since 1957.

I think we can all agree that we get entirely too much bad news here on Cape Breton Island. I'm sorry I might be contributing to that right now. But in a time of island wide recession, and steady population decline, it's super cool to see people's dreams come true every month or so.

And while more and more people are glued to their phones and computer screens, Chase the Ace gets people out of the house, and packs the entire community in one sizable room, sharing jackpot dreams. I've heard there was a time when communities used to come together all the time for stuff like fairs, parades, and bake sales. I wouldn't know anything about that. My generations nearest equivalent are Facebook groups.

Some of these Chase the Ace pulls have music, entertainment, and giant piles of tickets. It's been a while since a lot of these small towns had must-attend events, and if it takes millions of dollars to do that, so be it.

Con #3: May the Odds Be Never in Your Favor

I did not photoshop this picture. Somebody honestly thought it was a good idea to make a picture of lottery winners getting hit by lightning.

Humans are an optimistic species. When you tell us we have a 20% chance of getting cancer, our minds think about the 80% who aren't going to get cancer and we merrily go on with the rest of our lives. When you tell them there are only 8 cards left in Chase the Ace, we figure we just have to be there, because somebody might win, and that somebody could be me.

Here's the thing about the odds. I'm not a mathematician. I couldn't figure out the odds before the draw. I would rely on our resident Math PhD, Shannon Ezzat for that, but what I do know is that it took $10 million to finally pick the winning Ace in the Sydney Legion draw. I heard it was about $1 for one ticket for Chase the Ace, and you could get more by bundling. That means that more than 10,000,000 tickets were bought before someone eventually won.

That's a 0.00001% chance of winning. That's bonkers low, but that's now how our minds work. When we hear there are only 6 cards left, our brains automatically jump to picking out the card, totally skipping the incredibly unreasonable selection process beforehand. That's how a 0.00001% chance looks like a 17% chance to the reptilian part of our brain. This is not because we're dumb. It's just a peculiar hiccup of the human brain.

And since when is the fact that "someone might win" an attractive quality to an event. Would you go to a hockey game because someone might win. What if there was a 50/50 draw where somebody might win. You know what's another way of saying "Somebody might win?" "Everybody is probably going to lose." But Chase the Ace brilliantly lasts months, steadily increasing the drama and excitement every week, and investing us deeper and deeper into the draw, like a bad movie sequel you have to go see because you saw all the other movies.

Conclusion

Honestly, this article is probably coming a bit late. All the cons of Chase the Ace point at the fundraiser being a victim of its own success over anything. It would carry almost no baggage if we were talking about $50,000 draws at your local legion, and I don't really see these huge pots happening for much longer.

Chase the Ace carries all the features of an exploding fad. As I said above, every Legion, boat club, and even some Chinese restaurants are jumping on the Chase the Ace bandwagon, and just like miniskirts and pogs, it's just not cool anymore when everyone is doing it. More and more, the question of the weekend on Cape Breton Island is going from "Are you going to Chase the Ace?" to "Which Chase the Ace are you going to?" The market is oversaturated.

In the end, even with all the cons of Chase the Ace, I'm glad it happened. A lot of money was donated to some great causes, and that would have never happened without it.

The only question I have left is "How long is it going to last?"