The tabellone
The master board, all ninety numbers printed on it. Whoever holds it runs the draw and, in the standard arrangement, pays in for the six notional cards the board represents. The board itself cannot win.
Tombola is a domestic lottery played at the kitchen table over Christmas. One player holds the tabellone, a master board carrying every number from 1 to 90, and draws numbered tiles at random from a bag or a wicker basket. Everyone else holds cartelle, cards of fifteen numbers. Prizes are paid as the card fills.
The stakes are usually symbolic. A card costs a token amount, the money goes into a pot and comes back out as prizes, and in many houses the prizes are not money at all. That is what keeps it a family game rather than a gambling one, and Italian descriptions of the rules make the distinction explicitly.
The link to this site's other pages is the caller. Announcing a number at tombola traditionally means announcing its figure from the smorfia napoletana alongside the digits. That is why a folk list of ninety pictures has survived into the twenty-first century: it is spoken aloud once a year in a great many living rooms.
- Two to as many as the table holds
- 1–90, the same range as the lotto
- 3 rows × 9 columns, 15 numbers
- 6 cards, covering 1–90 exactly once
- Beans, chickpeas, lentils, pasta, nutshells
- Christmas, at home
The equipment
The cartelle
Cards of fifteen numbers on a 3 × 9 grid, five numbers and four gaps per row. Sheets are printed in sixes so that the six cards between them carry 1 to 90 once each. The columns are deliberately uneven: nine numbers in the first, ten in the middle ones, eleven in the last.
The basket
A wicker basket, in Neapolitan a panariello, or a cloth bag. The ninety wooden tiles go in and are drawn out blind. The word panaro for a basket is standard Neapolitan; panariello is its diminutive.
The counters
Whatever is on the table. Italian descriptions of the game name beans, chickpeas, lentils, pasta, and the shells left over from the Christmas dinner. Nothing about the choice is ceremonial; the cards are printed card and the counters are whatever will sit on them.
The prize ladder
| Prize | What it takes | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Ambo | 2 on one row | Often the first prize called. Treccani lists ambo and terno as optional extras rather than core. |
| Terno | 3 on one row | The same word means three numbers on a lotto bet, which is where it came from. |
| Quaterna | 4 on one row | Four of the five squares on a single line of a card. |
| Cinquina | 5 on one row | A full row. This is the prize that separates tombola from bingo. |
| Decina | 2 full rows | Also called rampazzo. Not on every house's list of prizes. |
| Tombola | all 15 | The whole card. Ends the game. |
| Tombolino | all 15, second | A consolation for the second card to fill, where the house plays it. |
Many households add a rule that a card cannot take two prizes on the same row, so that a player who makes ambo on the top line must find their terno on another. It spreads the winnings around a table that usually includes children. It is a house rule: the official version allows ambo, terno, quaterna and cinquina all on the same row, and allows ties.
Why the ladder exists, in numbers
A card holds fifteen of the ninety numbers, so a single card cannot fill before the fifteenth draw. The chance that it fills exactly then is 1 in 45,795,673,964,460,816, which is the number of ways to choose fifteen numbers from ninety.
The more useful figure is the average. Waiting for one specific card to fill takes, on average, 85.3 of the 90 draws — the expected position of the last of fifteen numbers drawn without replacement from ninety is 15 × 91 ÷ 16. A single row of five fills at 75.8 draws on average. In other words, if tombola paid only for the full card, most of the table would sit through almost the entire basket with nothing happening. The ambo, terno, quaterna and cinquina are what make the first hour worth playing.
With many cards in play the first tombola arrives much sooner than 85 draws, because the game ends on whichever card fills first. That is also why buying more cards helps less than it feels like it should: each extra card adds a smaller increment to the chance of winning than the one before it.
Tombola is not bingo
| Tombola | American bingo | |
|---|---|---|
| Number range | 1 to 90 | 1 to 75 in the American game |
| Card layout | 3 rows × 9 columns, 15 numbers, 5 per row | 5 × 5 grid, 24 numbers plus a free centre square |
| Winning shapes | Rows only, plus the full card | Row, column or diagonal, plus the full card |
| Intermediate prizes | Ambo, terno, quaterna, cinquina | Usually none below the pattern being played |
| Who calls | Whoever holds the tabellone, at the family table | A professional caller in a licensed hall |
| What the caller says | The number and its smorfia figure | The number |
The story Naples tells about 1734
The origin account you will meet everywhere runs like this. In 1734 Charles of Bourbon, newly king in Naples, wanted to bring the clandestine lotto under state control and collect the revenue. The Dominican friar Gregorio Maria Rocco objected that the game was an ingannevole ed amorale diletto, a deceitful and immoral amusement, that kept the faithful from prayer. The compromise was that the lotto would be suspended over the Christmas holidays. Neapolitan families, unwilling to give it up, put the ninety numbered tiles in a basket and played at home. The game acquired a new name and stayed.
Both men are real. Charles took Naples in 1734. Padre Rocco, born in the city on 4 October 1700 and dead there on 2 August 1782, was a genuinely formidable figure who talked Charles into building the Real Albergo dei Poveri and got the streets lit by persuading householders to keep a lamp burning under a sacred image. Alexandre Dumas wrote that he was more powerful in Naples than the mayor, the archbishop or the king.
The dating is another matter. The Italian word tombola for the game is first attested in 1798, sixty-four years after the supposed founding. The mathematical structure of ninety numbers comes from the sixteenth-century Genoese giuoco del seminario, and individually numbered cards were already documented in early eighteenth-century aristocratic games such as cavagnola in France and northern Italy. The 1937 Enciclopedia Italiana describes tombola in full and mentions neither Naples nor any founding quarrel. Italian Wikipedia itself flags the 1734 account as tradition rather than history.
So: a good story, two real people, and a date that does not survive checking. Naples has been telling it for a long time and it is worth telling, provided it is told as what it is.
Called by its picture
There is no fixed calling script. The practice of naming the figure is documented; the wording is not, and claims to a canonical set of tombola formulas do not survive checking. Families improvise, and the improvised version is the tradition.
Tombola — frequently asked
One player takes the tabellone, the master board carrying all ninety numbers, and draws wooden or plastic tiles at random from a bag or a wicker basket. Everyone else holds cartelle, cards of fifteen numbers in three rows of five. As numbers are called, players cover the matching squares, traditionally with beans, chickpeas, lentils, bits of pasta or nutshells left over from the Christmas dinner. Prizes go to the first ambo, terno, quaterna, cinquina and finally tombola.
Fifteen, arranged in three rows of five across a 3 × 9 grid. A standard sheet holds six cards between them containing each of the numbers 1 to 90 exactly once. The columns are not evenly filled: the first holds only nine numbers, 1 to 9, the middle columns ten each, and the last eleven, 80 to 90.
Range and shape, mainly. Tombola draws from 90 and uses a 3 × 9 card of fifteen numbers, won by rows; American bingo draws from 75 and uses a 5 × 5 card of twenty-four numbers plus a free square, won by rows, columns or diagonals. The stated substantive difference is that in tombola a completed row, the cinquina, is a genuine prize, whereas a bingo game can run to a full card with nobody having made one.
That is the story Naples tells, and it should be reported as a story. The word tombola for the game is not attested in Italian until 1798, sixty-four years later. The 90-number structure comes from the sixteenth-century Genoese giuoco del seminario, and individually numbered cards were already in use in aristocratic games such as cavagnola by the early 1700s. The 1937 Enciclopedia Italiana describes the game in full and mentions neither Naples nor any founding dispute.
Nobody has settled it. Treccani says etimo incerto for the game. The De Mauro dictionary dates it to 1798 and offers a tentative link to the other tombola meaning a tumble, marked as uncertain. Treccani, interestingly, runs the influence the other way and says the tumble word was jokingly assimilated to the game's name. A third account, repeated on Italian Wikipedia without a solid source, derives it from the tombolo, the lacemaker's cylindrical pillow, after the shape of the wooden number tiles.
Yes, and it is documented. The Italian reference description of the rules states that the announcement generally includes one of the images the traditional Neapolitan smorfia attaches to the numbers 1 to 90. Naples is often described as playing the Christmas tombola accompanied by the smorfia. What is not documented is a fixed script: there is no canonical set of calling formulas, and families improvise.