Luck of the draw... or is it?

Have you ever wondered what those drawing/raffle winners do to win, or how they win multiple times?  The thought has crossed my mind more than once, and I suspected that some "trick" was involved somehow.  Let's see if I can show you what I mean by an real life example: me.

Today I was at work in the middle of doing research on a coding error I was receiving in my code when I get a call from my wife.  She tells me "You did it again!".  At first, I'm kickly trying to figure out what I did this morning and why was I in trouble for it.  She then proceeded to tell me that I didn't do anything wrong, but rather that I had won another prize from the PGA Tour Partners Club.  I won a complete set of King Cobra S9 irons in the January 2009 drawing.  To put things in perspective, I won a King Cobra LD Speed Pro S driver back in December 2007 by also entering in a PGA Tour Partners Club drawing.  About 2 years later, I win a complete set of irons from the same manufacturer and from the same company doing the drawing.  What "trick" did I use to win?  Who did I have to pay to make the odds better for me?  The answer to those 2 question: none.

Let me explain the details of the PGA Tour Partners club drawings.  You go to their website and log in to your account.  You then proceed to click ont he Contests tab and pick which contest you want to participate in.  The only restriction the club has is that you can only enter in the drawings once a day.  So my "trick" if you want is that I went to the site daily to enter in the drawings.  Most drawings are for a month, but some are for 2 months.  If you go there every day, that's at least 30 entries (except for February) for each drawing.  Now I know I'm not the only one in the club and there are tens of thousands of people, if not more, that do something similar to this (at least they will after they read this).

Putting all this together made me realize that there is no "trick" or "black magic" involved, but rather perseverance and dedication to the "cause", which in this case, is a drawing.  If you want to participate in a drawing, find out what the rules are and if you're allowed to enter multiple times.  It is very important to find out if purchases are necessary to enter and/or if there is a cost associated with entering the drawing.  In my case, you have to be a member of the PGA Tour Partner Club to participate in it and you have to decidate the time to do the entries each and every day.

Hope this shed some light on the mysteries of how people win drawings/raffles.

Until next time,

Sebastien Limoges