Bunco

Modern Bunco (also Bunko or Bonko) is a parlour game played in teams with three dice.

Bunco was originally a confidence game similar to three card monte. It originated from 19th-century England where it was known as "eight dice cloth". It was imported to San Francisco as a gambling activity in 1855, where it gave its name to gambling parlors, or "Bunco parlors", and more generally to any swindle. After the Civil War the game evolved to a popular parlor game. During the 1920s and Prohibition, Bunco was re-popularized as a gambling game, often associated with a speakeasy. Law-enforcement groups raiding these parlors came to be known as "Bunco squads". Bunco as a family game saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s.