History of satta matka

Satta matka started as a way of betting on numbers in Bombay (now Mumbai) and grew into one of the best-known number games in India. Its history explains many of the words players still use today: open, close, panna, jodi and bazar.

Cotton rates and the first numbers

Before the 1960s, people in Bombay placed bets on the opening and closing rates of cotton as reported from the New York Cotton Exchange. When that information stopped arriving, organisers needed a new way to produce numbers. The answer was to draw them: numbers were written on slips or picked from a deck of cards, and the slips were drawn from an earthen pot, a matka. The name stayed long after the pot disappeared.

Kalyan and Worli

In 1962 Kalyanji Bhagat started a market that declared results every day of the week; it became known simply as Kalyan and grew into the most followed market in the country. In 1964 Ratan Khatri started a rival market that ran on working days with a later timing, remembered today through names like Main Ratan and Main Bazar. Between them they set the pattern that almost every market follows today: an open result, a close result a couple of hours later, and a jodi formed from the two anks.

How a result is formed

Three digits are drawn for the open. Arranged in the traditional order they make the open panna, and the last digit of their sum is the open ank. The same happens for the close. That is why a full result looks like 137-12-345: open panna, jodi, close panna. It is also why only 220 three-digit combinations are valid pannas.

The decline of the old markets

Through the 1990s police action in Mumbai broke up many of the large operations, and play spread to other states and smaller markets. New names appeared, many of them borrowing the timings and formats of Kalyan and Main Bazar, and splitting into day and night versions.

Results move online

From the 2000s, results that were once passed along by word of mouth started appearing on websites, and charts that used to be copied by hand became searchable records going back years. Today most people follow results, jodi and panel charts and guessing on their phones.

Satta matka has always been a game of chance, and taking part in it can be illegal. This page is history, not encouragement.