To start playing Bingo online for real money a player will have to create an account and make an initial deposit with an online Bingo site. You can find our favourites in the menu on the right hand side.

Games start every few minutes depending on the Bingo host and time of day. Internet Bingo games commonly use auto-daubers, which automatically mark your cards for you. This is much more convenient, compared to live Bingo, where the drawn numbers are called out and it is up to you to find those numbers on your cards and mark them. This feature allows you to buy far more cards in online Bingo than in live Bingo. Also, while the computer is allocating the markings for you, the cards are sorted into the order by which they are progressing. This way, you can easily see which card is progressing best and you can ‘cheer it on’. Both improvements of online Bingo versus live Bingo mean that the Bingo player has a lot more time on her/his hands. This time can be spent in the Chat Room, where the CM’s (Chat Monitors) keep things interesting and run chat games with additional prizes.

When playing Bingo online, a selection of Bingo cards is randomly selected for you by the computer. If you don’t like this selection, you can click a button and the computer randomly displays another selection of cards. You choose your cards from this selection. Most Bingo sites allow you to choose up to 48 different cards. The game patterns is also displayed on the screen , so you can easily see which Bingo pattern you must complete to win the game. Some patterns are easy to complete, which will make for a very short game. Others are more difficult and will take many calls to complete. The most common Bingo patterns are straight lines in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal direction.

The jackpot is often linked to the ‘Coverall’ games where you would need to get all the numbers on your card within a short space of time (e.g. in less than 50 calls). These jackpots constantly increase in value if they are not won and can get up to really big amounts. Play continues until one or more players have completed the Bingo pattern. If there is more than one simultaneous winner, the winners split the prize or jackpot.

A typical “dabber” or “dauber”, used for both U.S. and U.K. bingo tickets

The different winning combinations are:

• Line — covering a horizontal line of five numbers on the ticket.
• Two Lines — Covering any two lines on the same ticket.
• Full House — covering all fifteen numbers on the ticket.
  • In New Zealand in bonus (Super Housie) games, often three lines may be claimed – top, middle and bottom, usually with much larger prizes, are also played at various times throughout the session.
  • In the UK, however, it is most common for a line game to be followed directly by a two line game and a full house game, or just by a full house game.
  • In the UK’s National Bingo Game only a full house game is ever played. The record payout for the national bingo game was £950,000 and was won by a lucky customer from Gala Sheffield Parkway.
  • In all cases, the last number called must be in the winning sequence. If you do not stop the game in time, beware, because if the caller starts the next number, your claim will be deemed invalid!

When players first come to the venue (often a church hall, rugby club or other place with sufficient tables and chairs, including in the UK many specifically designed bingo clubs) they can buy a book of tickets. Players generally play between one and six books. In New Zealand a book usually contains fifty tickets which are played over the course of the night. In UK bingo clubs, playing is divided into sessions with different books, each with a designated number of pages. Players in the UK usually prefer to buy books of six tickets containing all possible numbers in different combinations.

As each number is called, players check to see if that number appears on their tickets. If it does, they will mark it with a special marker called a “dabber” or a “dauber”, shown here. When all the numbers required to win a prize have been marked off, the player calls out “Line” or “House” depending on the prize, and an official or member of staff will come and check the claim:

• In the UK with the increasing computerization of bingo systems, an Auto-Validate system is often used in large clubs where a 1 to 8 digit security code is read out by a member of staff and checked against the entry for that ticket on the system. This saves the club from the time-consuming exercise of reading out every number on the ticket.
• In smaller clubs, however, each number in the winning combination must be read out. The caller will check to see if each number has been called, and if it has, he will say something similar to “House correct – please pay out”.

There will often be an interval halfway through the game. In Australia and New Zealand Super Housie tickets are played and raffles (if there are any) are drawn. In UK bingo halls it is most common for Mechanised Cash Bingo to be played (see below).

Chris Lamb, duty manager from Gala Bingo Nottingham Castle, says “Electronic gaming is now taking another step forward with the introduction of P.E.T (programmable electronic tickets), that allows customers to play many more tickets on a small hand-held terminal, connected to the caller via wi-fi.”