Nine weeks ago, I entered a trivia tournament at Graney’s Stout. The grand prize offered at the end of the tournament were four tickets to a Jets-Dolphins game at the former Joe Robbie Stadium, along with two nights’ hotel accommodations. Every time a team won that week’s trivia competition, they would receive some raffle tickets.
And after winning seven out of the last eight weeks, I’m currently sitting on a nice pile of 69 raffle tickets for my efforts, with one more trivia game left to play.
The odds should be in my favor. But you know as well as I do, that a raffle is a completely random procedure. The winning ticket could have been given to someone who showed up one week, whiffed on questions like “What color is an orange?” and earned one participatory raffle ticket.
The odds should be in my favor, but any NBA fan knows that the ping pong balls bounce in mysterious ways, and until David Stern pulls out the frozen envelope with the bent corner, you don’t really know if you’ve got the #1 pick or you’re stuck with the first-round bust. Of course, the odds might still be in my favor – Michael Jordan was the third pick one year, going behind Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie.
And last night, it was a neck-and-neck battle for the nightly win – and the free pizza pie for next week – between myself and another squad, a group called Team Masto. They’d take a one-point lead, I’d come back to tie, I’d move forward with a two-point lead, they’d charge back to tie.
And eventually, I took the final set of questions, won the game, and snagged eight more raffle tickets, bringing my haul to 77 tickets.
All was set. All I needed was to wait for the hostess to pull the winning ticket out of the barrel, then I could call for a flight reservation and get ready to see Florida. To see a sunrise on Miami Beach. To see the woeful Miami Dolphins play the equally woeful New York Jets. To have a nice two-day vacation on South Beach.
The hostess drew the ticket. The trivia host read the number.
I quickly scanned my list of tickets.
Wait. The number called didn’t match my tickets.
Okay, I still have a chance. If the person who owns the ticket isn’t at Graney’s Stout, they’ll have to re-draw. All I have to do is wait and –
The wait lasted about two seconds. The winning ticket came from Team Masto.
So congratulations to Team Masto – although they didn’t win any of the weekly competitions, they still garnered enough tickets so that the winning ticket was in their possession. And from what they told me afterward, there’s some Miami Dolphins fans on the team and they’re super-excited for the win.
I shook their hands and congratulated them. They won the tickets, and I hope they have a great time at the game.
It was a good run at Graney’s Stout, and yeah I won my fair share of weekly prizes.
But even though I didn’t win the football tickets…
I’ve got another prize to fight for. Because Thursday night is the first night of the 2012-13 Elbo Room $2,000 trivia tournament.
And ain’t no way my Street Academy trivia team is gonna lose out on that money.
No way.
No how.
Chuck The Writer 
sucks you didn’t win but since the tickets weren’t completely all-inclusive you still saved yourself a couple hundred bucks or more in airfare, meals and other amenities.
Reminds me of that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is trying to give away Super Bowl tickets and George says “in order to use these I’d have to spend a thousand dollars. This is a bill!”
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Chad – realistically, the only way I could have guaranteed a win was if I had snagged EVERY raffle ticket. But it’s okay. The trivia team that won has Dolphins fans, so they’ll appreciate the win.
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