Things You'll Need:
- Snacks and drinks
- A deck of cards
- Bingo chips or Tiddlywinks
- Pokeno cards
- One wrapped gift per player
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Step 1
Send out invitations at least a week in advance so guests can clear their schedules. You will want at least four players to keep things interesting.
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Step 2
Plan on providing the drinks, plates, napkins and utensils yourself. Ask each guest to bring a snack or appetizer and a wrapped gift. Suggest a price range for the gifts are of equal value.
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Step 3
As guests arrive, start snacking and put the gifts on a table. Consider playing some sort of ice breaker game if your guests do not all know each other.
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Step 4
Hand out Bingo chips (or Tiddlywinks) and a Pokeno board to each player. Pokeno boards can be purchased at game stores or can be created, by taking a piece of cardboard or card stock and drawing (or pasting) 25 card faces, with no cards duplicated on a board, in rows of five.
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Step 5
The game begins when the dealer shuffles a full deck of cards and starts turning over the cards, one at a time, face up on a table and calling out their denomination. If a player hears a card called that is on their game board, he or she will place a chip on that part of their board, similar to Bingo.
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Step 6
The dealer should continue to turn over cards and call them out--the faster the more exciting--until a player has five chips in a row on their board. The chips can fall vertically, horizontally or diagonally.
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Step 7
The first player (or players) to get five chips in a row should call out “Pokeno!” After confirming their cards have actually been pulled, the winner (or winners) choose one gift each and open it in front of the group.
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Step 8
Once all the gifts have been opened, take a 30-minute intermission for more snacking and talking. When the game resumes, players who call out “Pokeno!” will no longer open new gifts--they will start stealing from each other.
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Step 9
Set a time for the party to end, and when the clock chimes, everyone goes home with the gift or gifts in their possession.
