Christmas Tambola for the office party: rules, calls and how to run it for fifty people

Office Tambola has one problem the family version does not: the room is big, half the people have never played, and the other half will argue about a claim in front of the boss. The fix is a caller everyone can see, a prize list read out at the start, and a claim check that takes five seconds.

Tickets for a big room

One ticket per person is right for an office game. Most colleagues are new to it, and one ticket lets them chat and eat while they play. Print ten spare for people who arrive from the bar late.

The Tambola Tickets tool prints twelve tickets to a sheet, so fifty people is five sheets. Print at actual size, cut along the gaps, and put the tickets in a bowl at the door so nobody chooses a “lucky” one and nobody ends up with two from the same sheet.

If you want two tickets each, that is 110 to 120 tickets: ten sheets, or the two ready games of sixty that come in a kit.

Put the caller on the screen

The single best thing you can do for a big room is put the caller where everyone can see it. Open it on a laptop, plug into the projector or the TV, and every drawn number stays on the board. A colleague who was at the buffet can look up instead of asking for the last three numbers, which is what slows most office games to a crawl.

The caller draws the numbers in random order and reads each one aloud, so the person running the game only has to press the button and repeat the number with a festive call.

Six prizes, read out first

Colleagues will ask “is top line still going?” every two minutes unless the list is on the screen or read out at the start. Keep it to six:

• Early five: the first ticket with any five numbers marked.
• Top, middle and bottom line: all five numbers in that row.
• Four corners: the first and last numbers of the top row and of the bottom row.
• Full house: all fifteen numbers.

Six prizes fits a round into about 25 minutes, which is as long as an office crowd will sit for one game. Prizes that are fun to win in front of colleagues beat cash: a half day off in January, the best parking spot for a month, a hamper, the last box of the good chocolates. If it is a pot, split it 10% for early five, 12% for each line, 14% for four corners and 40% for full house.

Festive calls turn the draw into a show

A plain number draw is a lottery. Number calls make it a game: “Two turtle doves” for 2, “Twelve days of Christmas” for 12, “Christmas Eve, twenty-four”, “Boxing Day, twenty-six”, “Legs eleven, Santa’s on his way”. Say the call, then the plain number, so nobody has to decode it.

The old housie calls work for the numbers without a Christmas link: “Two little ducks, twenty-two”, “Clickety-click, sixty-six”, “Top of the shop, ninety”. A list of 90, one per number, is the part that takes longest to write yourself, which is why the Christmas kit ships with one.

Check claims by ticket number

When someone calls a line, do not read their ticket back to the room. Ask for the ticket number printed on it, type it into the caller’s Check a ticket box, and it shows which prizes that ticket has completed against the numbers called so far. Five seconds, no argument, and the caller keeps the pace.

Two rules to say before the first number: a claim must come before the next number is drawn, and a wrong claim is a bogey. In an office the bogey is best made a joke, not a fine: the claimant fetches the next round of drinks.

Two rounds if the party is long

A single round is 20 to 30 minutes. If the evening has room for two, use a second set of tickets with a new game number, so the same people are not sitting on the same near-complete tickets. A kit carries two games of sixty for exactly this reason.

Related guides

• How to organise Tambola at home has the full host’s checklist.
• Tambola games list explains fifteen prize patterns and how quickly each is won.