Bingo: The game that sprang out of an Italian lottery
All of us grown up playing pen and paper games like Sudoku or tic-tac-toe. What about bingo? Did we hit the jackpot? Yes!
Bingo is a common game that is played worldwide by kids and adults alike. It’s a game of chance wherein two or more players compete while marking off numbers on their cards (as and when they are dictated by the caller) and wins only when one of them calls out bingo (more like B-I-N-G-O) or ‘house’ when he or she crosses off all the numbers in a line either vertically, horizontally or diagonally, thus completing a pattern. While bingo has been a popular pastime since ages, have you ever wondered when and how it emerged?
Inspired by an Italian lottery
If you turn back your clocks to the Italy of 1530, you will come across a popular lottery event across the country called ‘Lo Gioco del Lotto d’Italia.’ Played every Saturday till date, this lottery featured playing cards having multiple columns and rows that are marked with numbers. Like in bingo, this lottery too had a caller who pulled out random numbers from a bag, and the first contestant to fill in an entire row or column would win the lottery (cash prizes to be exact). Long story short, the Italian lottery soon spurred lotteries in other countries, such as France (‘Le Lotto’) in 1770 where it was played among French upper-class men. Similarly, Germans too adopted it into a game in the early 1800s, which was meant for kids to help them learn maths, spellings and historical facts. By the end of the 19th century, it had crossed the continents and reached all the way to the USA.
Beano and the first Bingo card
Once in the USA, the game came to known as “beano.” It was directly inspired by all the lotteries of Europe, especially Lo Gioco del Lotto d’Italia and was essentially part of country fairs. In it, a dealer would select numbered discs from a box of cigars and players would mark their respective cards with dried beans. Guess what they yelled when they matched a pattern? Beano! Hence the name. Experts say that this was the original version of the first ever bingo.
By 1929, it became quite a popular game and was a favourite in carnivals, especially the one in Atlanta, Georgia. However, the game underwent a change in name as a New York toy salesman named Edwin S. Lowe overheard a player mistakenly call out ‘bingo’ instead of ‘beano’ and realised that ‘bingo’ sounded catchier.
Not only that, he went on to hire a math professor from Columbia University named Carl Leffler who helped him launch bingo cards with more number of combinations. What’s surprising is that, by the end of 1930, Leffler managed to create as many as 6000 different combinations on bingo cards, that too without any repetitive number groups. All these bingo cards were in turn sold and marketed by none other than Lowe, who made the game what it is today.
Bingo in church versus bingo in casino
It didn’t take long for Americans to realise the fundraising potential of bingo. As a result, a Pennsylvania-based Catholic priest approached Lowe to raise donations for the church. Needless to say, this increased bingo’s popularity overnight and by 1934, more than 10,000 bingo games were played in churches every week. It soon also reached retirement homes and nursing houses, where it was deemed as a recreational activity for the old and the diseased.
But like most things, bingo too had a negative side. It also caught the eyes of gamblers and hence entered casinos, especially in Las Vegas. While laws have developed over the years and playing bingo for money is now legal, it’s still looked down upon. Regardless, Americans still spend more than 90 million dollars annually in bingo casinos.
Today, bingo is played worldwide and come in various kinds, hard cardboard cards to plastic markers to paper cards marked with ink; one can even play online. Most bingo cards in the present times have five columns and five rows with a free space in the centre.