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| October 21st: Julie Theme: Halloween | November: Theme: | December: Joyce Hook Theme: Christmas |
| January: Theme: | February: Theme: | March: Theme: |
| April: Theme: | May: Theme: | June: Theme: |
We are a group of women in the LA County area who get together about once a month to catch up over a few rounds of Pokeno! Each month's host chooses a theme which primarily determines the theme for the prizes. Common themes, of course, run with the holidays, but we also try to be a little creative!
Pokeno is fairly similar to Bingo. Instead of cards that correspond to lettered and numbered chips, Pokeno cards have blocks that look like playing cards (see sample on the left). A deck of playing cards is shuffled and each card is read. Then, like Bingo, if your Pokeno card matches the playing card that is called, you have a match, which you can mark for yourself with a chip. In basic Pokeno, just like Bingo, if you get a line of matches, you win! The winner shouts "Pokeno!" and gets a prize. You should be able to buy Pokeno sets at game stores, Wal-Mart-type stores or on-line (see an example of the box for Pokeno sets up there on the right). If you get more than one set, it's a good idea to make sure the cards don't match, since people playing with matching cards will obviously always tie (unless someone makes a mistake).
We like to play where instead of just boring lines we make patterns and shapes. Here are some of these patterns that you can try! Also, another variation that we use is at the beginning of the round, everyone puts a hand in the air. As the cards are called, each person puts her hand down if she gets a match. The last person to get a match wins "hands down;" she gets to choose a prize along with whoever gets Pokeno. We play by allowing the winner to choose among the prizes brought by each player.
If there are two winners of a round, you can choose to either let both people get a prize, or you can keep going until one of the winners has the next match that the other does not ("sudden death"). We usually let both winners choose a prize. However, if there are two or more winners of hands down or three or more people who get Pokeno, then we usually go to sudden death. Also, you may choose to play by finishing the games when all of the prizes run out. We play by going and going; when the prizes are all chosen, you can choose any prize, thereby "taking" it from the person who originally won it, kind of like a Yankee swap. This way, you should not get too attached to a prize you win early on because you might not go home with it!
For our last round, we like to play "blackout," which is where everyone keeps playing until you get a match for every card (that is, you have chips covering your whole card). Before the game, everyone puts a dollar or two into a basket. The winner of this last round gets this money!