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How to play online bingo - beginners guide
For those of you with no knowledge of playing online bingo, here is the basics. Bingo is a game of numbers that involves striking through numbers from a online bingo card that are randomly drawn and then called out to the players involved in the games. When all the numbers are called from the players bingo card, the bingo game is then won.
The traditional 90 number bingo game has a card that has 3 rows and 9 columns. Five squares in each row contain numbers from 1 to 90 and the others are blank. Generally the game consists of 3 attempts; the single line, two lines and the full house where all the numbers are called on the card. The lines play across the board not down the board and the player wins the prize for the line that they match numbers with. You can purchase a strip which includes all numbers from 1 to 90 or single or multiple games with a random selection of numbers. There is also 75 number bingo more commonly played in the USA. This involves making a pattern on your bingo card from the numbers that are called. The rest of the principles stay the same.
Online bingo has a call board so that you can keep on top of the numbers that are drawn and see the previous numbers. Don’t panic though because even if you fail to claim and are the winner you are automatically declared the winner (unlike in a bingo hall)!! This is a handy tool in case of disconnection from your server or other technical problems that might affect your game. This works with the manual dauber too – take your eyes off the numbers and miss one call and this still does not affect your eventual win.
Online Bingo Vs Offline Bingo
There are not many differences between online bingo and offline.
When you play bingo online, a random number generator is used instead of balls, as used in bingo halls.
Another key feature of bingo online is the chat option. The best sites encourage and grow an online community, through the interaction between players during games. Players use all kinds of abbreviations when they’re chatting, so check out our guide to Bingo Lingo and you’ll never away when you play bingo online again!
Chat Monitors or Chat Moderators (CM for short) work for the bingo sites, welcoming players and creating a friendly environment during games. They often run chat games while you play bingo online, where additional bonus points are readily made available.
There are often extra features which make playing bingo online even easier. ‘Auto-daub’ marks the numbers on your cards as they are called automatically, so you don't have to search for yourself. Other sites have features like ‘Best Card Sorting’ and ‘Best Card Highlighting’ – which organise and highlight your cards by those closest to bingo. This allows you to enjoy the fun of the chat features while you play bingo. If only you got that kind of service in bingo halls!
The Background of bingo
Below are some facts about bingo it's fascinating History. Bingo has been around for nearly 500 years, so in comparison bingo online it is a relatively new craze. Although when bingo began it wasn’t quite the game that we all know. Here are some facts to impress your friends with, while you’re enjoying your next game of bingo online.
| 1530 | - | The earliest form of bingo is played in Italy, traced back as far as 1530. Back then it’s a lottery-style game, known as “Lo Giuoco Code Lotto” or "Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia". It is still played in Italy every Saturday. |
| 1778 | - | By this time, word had spread to France, where the most intellectual and wealtheist of Frenchmen regularly enjoyed a good game of bingo. It called back then "Le Lotto". |
| 1880 | - | The craze reaches Germany, where the game is used in education to teach children about maths, spelling and history (in some areas, bingo online is used for education today). |
| 1929 | - | North America catches on, and the game now known as ‘beano’ is played at a carnival near Atlanta, Georgia. If the caller yells a number present on the player's card, they place a bean on the said number. When the beans form a straight line in any direction, the winner shouts ‘Beano!’ A New York toy salesman, Edwin S. Lowe, overhears someone accidentally yell ‘bingo’ instead of ‘beano’, and decides to rename the game ‘bingo’. |
| 1930 | - | Lowe hires math professor Carl Leffler to help him increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. Leffler invents 6,000 different bingo cards – it’s rumoured that Leffler then went insane. Good job he never played bingo online! |
| 1934 | - | A Catholic priest from Pennsylvania asks Lowe about using bingo to help raise church funds. As bingo is played in churches, the game soars in popularity. An estimated 10,000 games are being played every week at least. |
| 1968 | - | Under the Gaming Act of 1968, bingo is formalised in the UK. |
| 1986 | - | The National bingo game is launched in the UK. bingo online is still a speck on the horizon! |
| 2005 | - | More than 3 million people regularly play bingo offline, with numbers soaring in online bingo. |
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