Playing the numbers

After 50 balls, the game changes.

Since ball one, the pressure inside Cape Girardeau's Bingo World has been steadily mounting, but when the 49th ball is called on the $1,000 progressive jackpot at the Cape Girardeau Kiwanis Monday Night Bingo, the tension is tangible.

"It's gonna go," says Chasity Zoellner of Perryville, her pink dauber flying across the 27 bingo cards she's playing at one time. "I need 64."

The 24-ball minimum required to take home the fledgling $1,000 jackpot has long since passed, but a slightly smaller consolation prize -- $999 -- is still on the line until someone shouts the most hated and loved five-letter word in the English dictionary.

Ball 52 ... 53 ... .

"It's gonna go, it's gonna go. Sixty-four, sixty-four," the 28-year-old Zoellner whispers through clenched teeth as she watches the overhead monitor for the number on deck.

Ball 57 ... 58 ...

"BINGO!" roars a lady three tables away.

A wave of sighs and expletives rolls through the crowd.

It's verified. We have a bingo, one person $999 richer and 240 people disgusted at the bingo gods or the caller.

$11,000 winner last week

That having been game 11 of 22 to be played tonight, it's time for the 20-minute intermission. Time to go to the bathroom, call to check on the family or belly up to the concession stand for nachos or a chili dog. The big game, the $9,000 progressive jackpot, has yet to be played.

But $9,000 is nothing. Last week in this very room, Roselia Friga of Oran, Mo., walked out with $11,000. Since the Kiwanis Club started its Bingo Night in 1984, they've given away two cars and pots as high as $19,000. With the high stakes, computerized equipment that includes table-top computer monitors that practically play themselves and complicated game schemes called "Maggie and Jiggs," "Snow Flake" and "Eight States," it's plain to see that this isn't your grandmother's bingo.

Actually, it might be. Your grandma might be here. So might your mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters. For that matter, your fathers, brothers and uncles may be here too. Anyone from age 16 and up that can curse, read numerals and hold a dauber has a chance. On any night of the week, the Kiwanis Club, Optimists, Elks, Notre Dame Regional High School and St. Mary Cathedral School are holding their games with progressive jackpots rising into the thousands of dollars. With a chance to win that four- or five-digit jackpot on a $2 sheet of three bingo faces, it's hard for anyone to pass up.

That's what's brought first-time Cape Girardeau visitors Kent Stacy, 40, Dillan Stacy, 17, and Melissa Harris, 18, on the hour-and-45-minute drive from Southern Illinois.

"The pots aren't nearly this big in Illinois," said Kent Stacy, carefully scanning his card for the called number. Rookies and occasional players seem to have a harder time with this while veterans find the number on each of their 27 grids with a smooth, effortless sweep.

Even in Paducah, Ky., Kent Stacy said, the pots only get to $300 or $500. But, 11 games into the fray, the three bingo groupies have seen little luck.

For bingo regulars like Zoellner, the losses are too numerous to count. It's the memories of the big wins that keep them coming, the anticipation of being just one or two numbers away, as she and her partner, Nikki Heider of Jackson, were last Monday on the $11,000 prize.

"We split everything we win," says Heider, gearing up for another game. The most they've ever won in 12 years of bingo playing was an $1,199 consolation on a big jackpot. That's the top consolation possible at many bingo nights, because both the club and the player would have to have taxes withheld on anything $1,200 and above.

"We don't need to win big," says Zoellner. "If we win enough to cover our play and come the next night, we're happy."

"But we'd come the next night anyway," says Heider with a laugh. They come every night of the week, almost without fail. Zoellner sometimes brings pictures of her children with her for good luck. They're back at home, being watched by her understanding husband.

"He's got golf, I've got bingo," she explains.

Cash cow

As one can tell from the stern silence that dominates the room in the middle of a game, bingo is a serious thing for those who tote their good-luck charms and personal bag of daubers from game to game. But it is also big business for the group holding the event.

Kiwanis Club member Ralph Stroud said that the group takes in $130,000 to $140,000 annually from bingo, all of which goes to charity. On an average night, 225 to 250 people come to play. But the cash cow for this business is the progressive jackpots, which start at $1,000 for a cover-all bingo in 24 balls. Each week that the jackpot's not won, the pot goes up $250 and the maximum number of balls to win the jackpot goes up by one.

"Cover-alls are almost never won on fewer than 48 balls," Stroud said. Often, 50-plus is the magic range. When a progressive gets up to $10,000, the group cleans up at the ticket window, like last week's $11,000 game, which was played by more than 700 people.

Tonight's $9,000 progressive with a 48-ball limit is what brought Betty Kinslow all the way from Jonesboro, Ill. She was one number off last week's big prize. As the big game opens, she and the rest of the faithful clutch their daubers, grit their teeth and hope.

But 10 minutes later, the night's ration of hope seems exhausted as the jackpot ball limit passes by without a winner. There is little consolation in winning the consolation prize. Two more smaller games and then it's time to pack it in after three hours of daubing.

"That's bingo," Kinslow said earlier. "Some yell bingo, others yell ... well, you know."

trehagen@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 137