Women Across the Nation Love Bunco

Women Across the Nation Love Bunco

Women all over the country are discovering Bunco, a fast-moving dice game. Of course, men can play this game too. But women have seemed to claim this party game as their own as reports of girl's nights across the country involve a rollicking game of Bunco.

Here's how to play:

You will need 12 people, three card tables, 12 chairs, nine dice, scratch pads, munchies, drinks and prizes. Keep in mind that there are several versions of Bunco that can be found on the Internet. However, here is the gist.

Twelve women split up into teams and sit among three tables. The tables are "ranked". There is a head table, a bottom table, and a middle table. When your team wins a game, it advances to the next higher table, leaving the losers to stay at the same table. Their tables will change as they experience good and bad luck with the dice. They roll the dice and try to get sets of sixes to score points. If they roll ones, their score is wiped out and they descend to the losing table, the table where ladies are not rolling sixes and have suffered wipeouts.

Each six rolled is worth a single point. The player rolls as long as s/he keeps getting sixes. If you roll all ones, it is called a "wipeout". Your team loses all their points if you roll a wipeout. If you roll all sixes, it is called a "Bunco".

The head table plays until the winning team scores 21 points. When this happens, the head table calls "stop" and play stops at all tables. If there is a tie at a table when play is stopped, play continues normally until the tie is broken. Note that scoring is separate at each table. Winning scores at the non-head tables could be 15 or 50, depending on the rolling. However, a winning score is the higher score and will always be 21 at the head table. At this point, play in this round is complete. Winners mark their wins on their scoring sheets, and losers mark their losses. At the end of the game time, the overall winner is decided by the number of wins and the overall loser is determined by the number of losses. Ties are broken by dice roll.

You can award prizes for the most Buncos and even for the most wipeouts.

The rules may sound daunting at first, but folks who have played say once you play it becomes more clear and even easy. People report that Bunco is one of the more fun party games. So get in on the action!