Because a collection of Ellison's short stories has not yet been published, these works have received very little critical attention in comparison to the large body of criticism that has grown up around his novel Invisible Man. For years the stories were difficult to find; they appeared in small magazines and few were anthologized. Consequently, criticism of "King of the Bingo Game" tends to focus more on the story's relationship to Invisible Man than on the story's position in Ellison's short story oeuvre.

As a precursor to Invisible Man, however, "King of the Bingo Game" demands attention. The Bingo King, like the protagonist of Ellison's novel, remains unnamed. He is alienated from his surroundings, and he combines the existential anxieties of the traditional modernist hero with the specific experiences of blacks in America, experiences which only heighten his alienation. Leonard J. Deutsch asserts that the story...