Trendy women becoming Bunco artists
By Amy van Aarem, Globe Correspondent | October 21, 2007
You know what they say about trends: By the time you spot one, it’s usually on the way out. But, for the moment, Bunco – a dice game played mostly by women in suburbs across the South Shore and beyond – just may be the most popular game that no one has heard of.
Like most trends, once you stumble upon it, you see it everywhere. I first learned of the dice game through a friend.
“Oh, I can’t do Thursday; that’s my Bunco night,” she said one day.
“Your what?”
I thought it was a new exercise class.
“You’ve never heard of Bunco?” she cackled, rolling her eyes.
I asked her if it was a New England thing.
“It started in the Midwest, you ninny,” she said.
When I got home, I googled Bunco and learned more than I ever needed to know about the game.
In a nutshell, Bunco is played with 12 people – three sets of four to a table, two teams at each, three dice per table. There’s a head table, a Bunco bell (similar to the bell one would use to summon the concierge at a hotel), scorecards, and a kitty.
It’s a cross between Yahtzee and, well, Yahtzee, except people yell “Bunco!,” not “Yahtzee!,” when they roll the correct combination of dice.
It’s been around, apparently, since the 1700s, but the popularity was reignited in the late 1990s when an entrepreneur started marketing the game to women as a social outlet.
Actually playing Bunco is only one component of Bunco night; the accompanying food and fellowship are equally – and sometimes more – important. Hosting duties are rotated throughout the 12 or 16 odd members in a Bunco group, which usually meet to play once a month. The hostess is in charge of determining the kitty (dollar amount that each player contributes – usually $10 to $15 per person), setting the pace of the game, and deciding the criteria for kitty distribution (whoever has the most Buncos, most points, etc).
“It’s spelled B-U-N-C-O? I thought it was B-O-N-K-O,” another friend said.
Although she had heard of it, like me, she had never played. But she reads the paper, and last January, The Wall Street Journal ran a story about Procter & Gamble infiltrating Bunco nights to market its heartburn medication.
Procter & Gamble started sponsoring Bunco nights, targeting the middle-aged social woman, apparently a prime consumer of heartburn medication. Their theory was that groups of women discuss products and pass advice on.
In the process, P&G created such a niche that it now sponsors the World Bunco Championships, held in Las Vegas each March.
Bunco provides an important social element – a good excuse to go out, something most men don’t seem to need.
Truth is, Bunco night is a night out with friends, laughter, food, beverages, and talking, lots of talking. But “Bunco night” has better cachet than a “I’m playing dice, gossiping, and drinking night.”
The friend who read about the phenomenon last year asked if she could tag along to the Bunco night that I had managed to get myself invited to.
“Yes,” I said. “But whatever you do, don’t go near the crab dip. . . . I heard it gives you heartburn.”
