All Your Need to Know Questions Answered

How to play Bingo!

Bingo is a game of pure chance. No skill or judgement is necessary to take part, nor any physical or mental preparation.
There are a variety of different forms of the game, but the basic premise always remains the same. Players in the game purchase cards, which consist of a several rows of numbers. Then numbers are dropped by random from a machine and called out by a bingo caller.

As the numbers are called, players mark them off on their playing card or cards with a pen. There are specifically designed pens for this purpose which are thick and sturdy and are known as ‘dabbers’. The main object of the game is to cross off all the numbers on a single card. The first player to do is the winner of the game. Getting all the numbers on a card is known as getting a ‘full house’ and in most forms of bingo, the winner announces themselves by shouting ‘house!’ when they have completed a card.

The prizes for eaching a full house are normally a share of the proceeds from all of the cards sold. In some cases this can be a considerable sum of money. Games are traditionally played in purpose built halls which can sit hundreds of players. In addition, with the advent of new technology, games have been linked across many bingo halls simultaneously resulting in massive bonus prizes of many thousands of pounds.

Some games carry smaller internal prizes for the completion of individual rows on a card.

A common strategy in bingo is to increase the odds on winning my purchasing multiple tickets. While this increases the amount of coverage of numbers a player gets, it also means that it requires much more concentration to make sure that numbers are crossed off correctly – as the same number can and will crop up on several cards simultaneously.

The game has also thrown up it’s own internal lingo. As well as ‘full house’, individual numbers are identified by nicknames. For example ‘two fat ladies’ represents 88, whilst 22 becomes ‘two little ducks’. Knowing these nicknames is part of becoming accepted into the internal social structure of bingo games.

There are many options for playing online bingo. The game is not radically different from its forebears, but cards are electronic and automatically marked off by software. To replace the social feeling of traditional bingo halls, players are encouraged to talk to one another in a ‘chatroom’ that sits alongside the game as it is played. Because the number of players is practically unlimited, eyecatching bonuses are regular offered to attract new players to the game.