Bunco's big these days, but that's no vice
 |
|
||||||||||
Surprisingly, for such a good-natured and sociable activity, bunco has a shady past. It was a gambling game in the West during the Gold Rush, and the word "bunco" — also spelled "banco" and "bunko" — came to mean a swindling game, as in the expression "bunco squad."
To understand bunco's appeal, you need to see a group in action. Take the ladies of the Deer Season Run club in Columbia, Md. Most of them are in their 30s and 40s. They all have busy lives and didn't do much with the other women on their street before Gayle Tobin, 42, moved in three years ago and asked her neighbors to play.
"It's a no-brainer," is how she describes bunco, which leaves plenty of room for gossiping and more serious conversation, even during play.
Tables are set up in hostess Dottie King's living room, dining room and kitchen. The women take their places, four to a table. One person is scorekeeper; she writes rapidly, barely keeping up as the dice are thrown over and over again as quickly as possible.
Tobin has the technique down: She shakes and then tosses the dice with both hands, putting some English on them. The others at the table throw more casually, barely seeming to look where the dice fall. The game could be intense, but an absorbing conversation about the coming neighborhood block party is going on at the same time.
A break halfway through the evening will provide more time for the group to socialize, while the women dig into the cheese and crackers, miniature cream puffs and other food laid out on the kitchen counter.
"Bunco!" yells Ella Jordan, 34, a school teacher with two kids, as she throws three of a kind that's the same number as the round being played. She races off to the dining room to pick up the bunco token — a silly hat — which she'll wear until the next bunco is thrown. Play resumes quickly when she returns.
After rounds of frenzied dice throwing, players leap from their seats at the bing! of a bell rung when someone at the head table reaches 21 points. Losers move to one table; winners to another.
"Before, I didn't know the community well," says King, 53, who works at Northrop Grumman and has two children. "It's a great social get-together for the community. Now we get to see people's homes, we have a night out once a month."
The group has 16 regulars and 8 substitutes. (Twelve regulars — three tables — are more usual.) They rotate hostess duties. The women ante up $5 each, which is split up at the end of the evening for prizes.
"The appeal is that it's not rocket science," says Leslie Crouch, founder of the California-based World Bunco Association. "All you need to know is how to count — and you don't need to count very far."
There are no hard statistics available, but judging from the ever-increasing sales of the "It's Bunco Time!!!" game and the ever-increasing number of hits on Web sites dedicated to the subject, bunco is growing in popularity.
(And speaking of the boxed game — there's a brilliant marketing strategy for you. Tens of thousands of them were sold last year, says Crouch, and she expects hundreds of thousands to sell this year. Remember, the only thing you have to have to play bunco is three dice. The game retails for $19.95.)
Crouch calls her association bunco's "sanctioning body," but it's not clear why the game needs a sanctioning body. There are no national tournaments. The rules are pretty simple, and few groups follow the association's "official rules" to the letter.
Crouch marketed the first "It's Bunco Time!!!" game in 1996, which included dice, a bell, pads, pencils and a bunco token (fuzzy dice); she then sold out to a game company. Now the association's main functions seem to be publishing a quarterly newsletter, selling a cookbook with party ideas and maintaining a Web site (www.worldbunco.com).
You would expect a game that is this popular to have spawned several how-to books, but the only one around is "The Sisterhood of Bunco: A Comprehensive Guide to the Game" by Maite Franck (Bittersweet Press, 1997), and you may have trouble finding a copy. The fact is, nobody needs a book to play. Bunco is a game that defies marketing and rules and anything but having a fun night out with friends.
It's probably easier to start your own bunco club than to try to get into one that's already established. Cheryl Campbell, 51, who remembered the game from the '70s when bunco had its last resurgence, wanted to find other players, so she ran a two-line ad in the local newspaper last January.
"I wanted to meet brand-new people," she says. "I got about 60 responses."
She formed a club of 12 with five or six substitutes, and her group has had two spinoffs.
It's not all fun and games for the women who play bunco. Some groups donate money to worthwhile charities. The Illinois-based Bunco for Breast Cancer raised more than $300,000 for the Susan G. Komen Foundation by asking groups to donate their pots. (See the Web site buncoforbreastcancer.org.)
Otherwise, the pot is usually divided up as prize money at the end of the evening. Typically the Deer Season Run players get $40 for the most points, $5 for the fewest (at least you get your ante back!), $25 for the most buncos, and $5 for the last to wear the bunco hat. Some groups have the hostess provide small prizes, or the money goes to pay for the food.
But the money really isn't the point.
"It's all for fun," says LouAnn Cyrana, 38, who teaches preschool. "We just do it to get out of the house."