Amigo- Please be my friend !!

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Bars in France 


The bars in France are rather lovely. In the winter they are warm and inviting and there is always a good, reasonably priced coffee or a bottle of red open. In the Summer you can sit outside with a nice cool beer and just watch the world go by. 

What is Amigo and where can you play it? 

 Many bars in France are also tabacs (pronounced tah-bah). Tabacs are very popular with the locals, not only for meeting up for a beer or coffee but also for the variety of services they provide including: placing bets, buying cigarettes, paying bills, buying train tickets, postcards and stamps and playing the Lotto. You will find a tabac in most villages, the big red sign enables you to locate them easily. 

On entering you will see people staring intently at the TV screens up on the wall. They will be either be watching the racing (trotting in Normandy is very popular) or they will be playing Amigo. 

Amigo is like bingo and there is a game every 5 minutes. You pick seven numbers (between 1-28) and then on the screen you will see a  ball bounce onto the 28 numbers. You get 7 blue balls and 5 yellow. Minimum bet is 2 euros and the maximum is 20. 

What can you win? 

According to Amigo there is a 1 in 3.05 chance of winning which seems very good odds. There are a variety of  cash prizes but with a 20 euro bet you could win 250,000 euros with 7 blue balls. The most we have won is 15 euros and we have been playing for over a year. 

 My brother visited recently and on the screen it said that the last person to win in that particular bar had recently  won 111 euros !. He thought that this was hilarious when the maximum prize is a quarter of a million but 111 euros would have comfortably paid for our beers, a few postcards and stamps. 

Please don't think that we spend all of our time drinking and gambling, we are just demonstrating to our guests what life is like in rural France. 

Bonne chance and don't forget your stamps!!












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