# Submitting your card to a raffle draw **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 8, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308 "2011-11-08T19:00:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/1 "2011-11-08T19:00:10Z")
Do you have a better chance of winning if you put your card in flat, or folded in half? ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/2 "2011-11-08T19:58:17Z")
It doesn’t matter in my raffles. If I’m taking business cards, then the reason is to get those names into a database. The data scanning gets done, then I generate a random number electronically and pick a name from the data set. If I’m taking those pre-numbered, two-part raffle tickets, I note my starting number and the ending number on my roll. I generate a random number between the two. Of course, this highlights the fact that different raffles use different methods of selection. ---
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/3 "2011-11-08T20:06:22Z")
I meant a live raffle where the winning card is pulled out of a jar with all of the cards in it. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/4 "2011-11-08T21:48:55Z")
The odds depend on how the person drawing does it. If they stick their hand in there & feel around until they feel something “typical” and then pull that one out, your folded card is likely to be skipped as “wrong”. So your odds are decreased. if, when the feel something unusual, they think, “aha, that’s the one I’ll grab”, then you’re odds are improved. So ask the person who sticks their hand in the jar which technique they use. Otherwise the question is unanswerable.deliberatly skip it Were _I_ doing the drawing, I’d consider any odd-sized or -shaped card as an attempt to game the lottery & I’d deliberately ignore / skip that one. But that’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![heathen\_earthling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/13edae/32.png) [@heathen\_earthling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/heathen_earthling)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/5 "2011-11-09T02:37:24Z")
In the last raffle I participated in, lots of people folded their cards. I’m not sure whether the majority did, but it’s definitely a common thing, and prompted me to ask this. If I was drawing the card, I wouldn’t consider either method unusual. This seems like a question that could be studied with data for enough separate trials, but I guess no one has cared enough to do that yet. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/submitting-your-card-to-a-raffle-draw/602308/6 "2011-11-09T17:26:15Z")
I think what we’re trying to say is that everyone handles the cards differently. An experiment might conclude that person A favors folded cards and person B favors flat cards, while person C doesn’t favor either. Now you have to do more experiments to find out what percentage of people are in A, B and C. All without providing anything very useful for one drawing in particular, since many of these drawings are done by letting random people in the audience select the cards.