One version used a playing card with nine columns and three rows, with four free spaces per row. (Interestingly, even to this day you can still play that lotto every Saturday.) The French picked up lotto in the late 1700s. That's when a state-run lottery called 'Lo Gioco del Lotto d'Italia' started in Italy. While bingo became popular in the United States early in the twentieth century, the roots of the game stretch back to the year 1530.