This is what sucks...

I am a member of two clubs in Wagga.

Both of them have regular 'members' bonus draws, of varying amounts. Of course, you have to be in the club when they draw (from their thousands of members) a badge number.

Unless one wants to turn into some sort of alcohol-pickled wastrel, it's not possible to be at them all.

Earlier this year, I was informed (by an utter qunt) that my name had been drawn out on a Sunday night $2000 draw at one of the clubs when I was not there. That club has approximately 15000 members.

Today I was told that last weekend, while I was attending a football match at the ground adjacent to the other club, they had a $4000 draw. And my name came out. Of the approximately 10000 members there.

Farq it...

I could laugh, but that would be mean. Bad luck, champion.

I don't see why people feel the need to say 'Hey, you missed out on a couple of grand...'

It won't make any difference to me if I don't know.

Qunts.

How comes you can't pick it up later?

Brass Monkey wrote:How comes you can't pick it up later?

The whole point is to draw members in, therefore you have to be present to claim. Same thing happened to me many years ago. I missed out on $1,200.00. Did'nt bother me as i had never attended on the nights it was drawn.

It's the club's 'incentive' to have members there more often. (In other words, to encourage people becoming alcohol-pickled wastrels, or pokie-machine addicts.)

They do draws on several occasions each week, for varying amounts, and once the number is drawn you have four or five minutes to claim the prize. The $2K I wasn't even in town, so that wasn't so bad, but the $4K I wasn't aware of the draw at that time and would have - at risk of cardiac arrest - been able to sprint in had someone let me know about it.

Them's the breaks, I suppose.

Oh, FWIW, the qunt who told me about how I'd missed the $2K got his comeuppance a few weeks later when his name came out for $10K and he wasn't there.

I was.

Needless to say, the word was passed along...

Maybe it was an urban myth.

Oh right, cheers Z&BD. What a strange thing that is. Also quite a good idea. Shame for you Zat, that's a real bleeder. Amazing that there's 15,000 members really.

But they don't fit in the same clubhouse at the same time.

You wonder if they fix the "winner" - sort of Father Ted car raffle style, but to make sure they don't even pay out to themselves. ("Right - who's missing tonight ..?") Though I suppose the general laws of maths and probability see to it that the pot is not won most times.

The prizes very rarely go off. But there are varying types of draw. Some clubs do them as jackpot draws, so if it's not won, there's a bigger pool the next week. One club I used to belong to in Canberra (30 000+ members) has weekly draws that get up to 10 or 15K, going up 100 a time, with four draws on each night. One year it was up to 50K, and the place was packed for about four Wednesday nights until it went off. A lady paid off her mortgage that week.

Jesus, how do these clubs make money - subscriptions and regular patronage? Don't reckon any of the local ones around mine could make two grand in a week.

They don't offer enough absentee rollovers.



Perhaps afraid that it they tried that in Wellingbro or Corby, they'd get the clubhouse razed in minutes.

Aye. I wouldn't dream of going to the outposts, though. I'm an urban cowboy. I stay around my way. And why not, must be 100 pubs in 3 square miles....

Brass Monkey wrote:Jesus, how do these clubs make money - subscriptions and regular patronage? Don't reckon any of the local ones around mine could make two grand in a week.

Each poker machine makes $100k a year and they would have scores of them

Kinenda. Poker machines! They're limited to casinos here, fortunately. Bad times for many a person otherwise.