La Lotería is a traditional Mexican board game, similar to bingo, but played with a deck of cards instead of numbered balls. Each card has an image of an everyday object, its name, and a number, although the number is usually ignored. Each player has at least one tabla, a board with a randomly created 4 × 4 grid selected from the card images. Players choose a tabla to play with, from a variety of previously created tablas, each with a different selection of images.
The traditional Lotería card deck is composed of 54 different cards, each with a different picture. To start the game, the caller (cantor, "singer") shuffles the deck. One by one, the caller picks a card from the deck and announces it to the players by its name, sometimes using a verse before reading the card name. Each player locates the matching pictogram of the card just announced on their board and marks it off with a chip or other kind of marker (I used to use dried beans). The winner is the first player that shouts "¡Lotería!" after completing a pattern on their tabla, similar to bingo: row, column, diagonal, four corners, or unique to this game, four in a square (pozo).