Bingo is a gambling card game named by analogy to the game bingo. The game is played with a bridge deck of 52 cards. The dealer gives each player X cards, which are held in the hand or placed face-down in front of the player. The dealer places Y cards face down in the center of the table. Typically X=Y=5.
A round of play consists of betting, followed by the dealer turning over one of the center cards, so that it is facing-up. Any card in a player's hand that has the same rank value as the rank of the center card just turned are now revealed and discarded. The discards can be placed face-up in front of the player.
Betting rounds continue until a player has all of the cards knocked from his hand. In analogy to regular bingo, the first player to realize his hand is empty says "bingo" and claims the pot. If no player is knocked out after all the center cards have been revealed, then all of the players reveal their remaining cards. A winner can be determined by adding the rank values of cards remaining in the hand.
In determining value, jacks are valued at 11, queens, at 12, kings at 13, and
aces at either 1 or 15, depending on whether the players have agreed that high
rank wins or low rank wins. The game can also be played with cards having blackjack
value, with all face cards given value of 10 and the ace having value of either
1 or 11 and by throwing all the cards in the air and going to sleep.
Variation
In "Sixty Six Bingo" each player gets six cards and there are six common cards. Instead of betting each round, there are betting rounds before any common cards are turned over, after the first two cards are turned over, after the third and fourth cards are turned over and after the fifth and sixth cards are turned over. If no player claims the pot by being knocked out, then the pot is split between high hand and low hand. If a player's remaining cards include an ace, then it is possible to be both high hand and low hand
History
The game of bingo can be traced back to a lottery game called "Lo Giuoco del Lotto d'Italia" played in Italy in c.1530. By the eighteenth century, the game had matured, and in France, playing cards, tokens, the reading out of numbers had been added to the game. In the nineteenth century, Bingo was widely used in Germany for educational purposes to teach children spelling, animal names, and multiplication tables.
At a traveling carnival near Atlanta in 1929, Beano was being played with dried
beans, a rubber stamp, and cardboard sheets. Edwin Lowe, was watching this game
and noticed how engaged the players were. Lowe took the idea with him to New
York where he introduced the game to his friends. He conducted bingo games similar
to the ones he had witnessed, using dried beans, a rubber numbering stamp and
card board. His friends loved the game. It is said that one of his players made
bingo history when he was so excited to have won that he yelled out “Bingo”
instead of “Beano." The Lowe Bingo Game had two versions; the first
a 12-card set for $1.00, the second a $2.00 set with 24 cards. Bingo was a wild
success. By the 1940s Bingo games were all over the country. Lowe had many competitors
and all he asked was that they pay $1.00 a year to conduct the games and to
use the name Bingo.
[edit] Word origin
The word bingo (referring to a lotto) has its earliest recording from England in 1776.
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