Mary Beth Kenny picked up the dice and rolled . . . a one, a three and a six. “That’s one,” she announced to her sister, Loretta Schletz, who was keeping score.
Kenny rolled again. A one and a one and a one. Three of a kind.
“Bunco!” she cried. She looked across the living room of her Tinley Park split-level to the table where another group of four women was playing the same game. “Hey, we got bunco, you guys. We gotta switch.”
Eight women, six dice, two tables, lots of talk. Must be bunco night in the southwest suburbs.
Bunco is a dice game. To be ignorant of that is to be new to the neighborhood.
But bunco is more than a game; it’s a cultural phenomenon. Bunco is one of those things that many in the south suburbs know about, sometimes get involved in, but rarely question. Few north of the Stevenson Expressway seem to have even heard of it, let alone played it, and South Siders don’t seem to mind that. They recognize bunco as a distinctive regional tradition, like Rainbow ice cream cones or the White Sox.
While women may be heard talking of their bunco night, and an annoyed husband overheard grousing, “It’s a hen party-that’s what it is,” knowledge of history of the game seems to be in short supply.
What is bunco? Where does it come from? Why it is so popular in these parts? The perfect opportunity to find the answers came on a recent Tuesday night, when Kenny was hosting her group’s monthly bunco night in Tinley Park, and Joanne Concannon was doing the same at her apartment in Oak Lawn. Why not visit both parties and see what’s what?
First, though, what is bunco? Different groups play the game differently, but players interviewed report that bunco is usually played with three dice and at least four players, who sometimes team up in pairs. Groups, often family- or neighborhood-based, rotate from house to house each month.
The object of the game is to throw three of a certain number in one roll-called a “bunco”-or, failing that, to be the first to score 23 points in any dice combination. The player who does either one first wins the round. On the first round, the players try for ones, the second for twos, and so on. There are six rounds in one game. Most groups play several “sets” of six or so games in one night. At the end, the host provides small gifts as well as a booby prize for the loser. Wagering is kept to a minimum, though there might be a floating dollar or small cash prizes.
In practice, here’s how it works. A group has just begun playing and is trying to roll ones. Player A rolls a one, a two and a five. She would score one point for the one she rolled (the two and five don’t count) and gets to roll again. If she threw three of any other single number, she would score five points and roll again. If she rolled three ones, she would earn a bunco and win the round. If she rolled no ones, she would pass the dice to Player B. At the end of each round, either the losers or the winners will switch tables, depending on each group’s rules. On the next round, the players would be trying to roll twos. And so on.
Dice-game novices might find this action confusing. Yet true bunco devotees can roll and score in a split-second.
“It’s kind of a simple game, so it’s relaxing,” said Loretta Schletz of Palos Hills as she rolled the dice. “You don’t have to think to do it, as you can see. We’re not thinking, we’re talking.”
And talking, and talking. Often bunco groups are family affairs, and Kenny’s group is no exception. She and Schletz are sisters, Loretta Stroud is their mother and Gay Ricca-Stroud is their sister-in-law. The shared history leads, inevitably, to an awful lot of talk.
“In a family our size,” Schletz explained, “bunco is a good way to keep track of who is doing what.”
So there is talk about the kids, the upcoming bridal shower, the “nutso” hairdresser, the odds on Lotto, even neighborhood dogs. At the Kenny house, topics included a dog that got a fish hook stuck in its mouth and a dead dog whose owner carried it around in a cardboard box.
With such endless conversational possibilities, bunco players seem to spend little time discussing the matter at hand-namely, bunco. No one at their party-about 20 bunco players total-could say with any authority where the game came from or how it got its name. Most remembered that their mothers had played it years ago, but shrugged when asked for specifics.
“It began at church socials and things,” said a none-too-definite Mary Kay Weir, who lives in Oak Lawn and was part of the Kenny party.
“Oh, it’s an old game, real old,” said Loretta Stroud, who also lives in Oak Lawn.
How old? Certainly older than the players at the Concannon residence, who were in their 20s and 30s. They had learned it from their mothers or other relatives. A few noted that they didn’t think it was played in other regions. One said she knew for a fact that it was listed in “According to Hoyle,” a reference book on games.
“It’s like Yahtzee, except that’s five of a kind and this is three of a kind,” Cathie Wiggins, of Alsip, offered helpfully.
The definitive answer cannot be found in a dictionary. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines “bunco” as a “swindling game or scheme.” It also notes that the word dates from 1872 and may have derived from banca, the Spanish word for bank.
In the Oxford English Dictionary, the listing for “bunko” begins by warning that it is U.S. slang. And then it says: “A swindling game (? at cards).” A definition with a question mark sends the seeker of truth on to other sources.
Neither “According to Hoyle” nor “Scarne’s Encyclopedia of Games” has any sort of reference for bunco or bunko. “Scarne’s,” however, does mention a dice game called Chicago, or Rotation, that is a little like bunco. It is played with two dice and involves trying to score all 11 number combinations possible. But the author, John Scarne, thinks the game evolved from a pool-table game called Chicago.
On to Bernard Beck, a Northwestern University sociology professor, who is, as revealed by Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, an expert on popular culture.
“In the old days,” he said, ” `bunco’ was a police term for fraud. Police forces had bunco squads that would crack down on gambling dens.” But the professor, who considers himself an expert on leisure and games, had not heard of bunco, the game. In fact, he had some questions of his own: What it is, where is it played, etc.
So there’s something the professor knows absolutely nothing about? “It appears that way,” he said. “Congratulations.”
Asked to name another academic type who’s an expert in leisure and games, Beck replied with a laugh: “Until today, I would have said me.”
Okay, time to stop kidding around. When you’re really sick, you go to the Mayo Clinic. When you’re really devoted, you go to Mecca or Jerusalem. And when you’re really serious about fun and games, you go to Las Vegas.
A call to the casino at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas lead to Rich Castle, the dice pit manager. He wasn’t able to shed any light, either.
It was becoming clear that the origin of bunco was like the meaning of the word “rosebud” in “Citizen Kane”-a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle. But enough is known about the game to hazard a few educated guesses.
The word’s original meaning of a gambling swindle and anecdotal evidence from current players suggest that the game probably started early in this century, perhaps during Prohibition. In this scenario, bunco grew out of dice games played in the gambling parlors and speakeasies of Chicago.
Beginning in the 1930s, housewives started domesticating the game, and it took on the characteristics we know today. For some reason, it has not appeared to catch on in other regions.
Also characteristically, on this Tuesday evening, all bunco players were women-a fact that seems to suit both genders.
“It’s usually a ladies’ night out,” explained Janice Barnett, who lives a couple of doors down from the Kennys in Tinley Park. Kind of like a south-suburban “Joy Luck Club,” you might say.
“It’s good entertainment,” said Mike Kenny, Mary Beth’s husband, who was watching TV in the den with the couple’s three children. “It’s a chance for her to socialize with friends. It’s like bridge. But it’s not for me. If I’m going to play cards, it’ll be poker.”
So women go on playing bunco, not sure where it came from but certain of its rewards. “It’s a challenge to talk, drink, smoke, roll and keep score at the same time,” said Alsip’s Julie Pecho, one of the players at the Concannon party.
And that’s not the only challenge. As a reporter and photographer left the Kenny party in Tinley Park for the next destination in Oak Lawn, someone called out, “Let us know if the gossip is better over there.”
