Bingo, also known by the name of Housie (NZ & Australia) or Housey (UK) is a popular gambling game. It’s generally played at large venues such as church hallway, rugby clubs etc. People buy tickets in order to try their luck out for huge prizes (money) at stake. As the game starts, numbers are announced randomly by a caller. Players strike them off in their tickets to attain the winning combination.
ALL ABOUT BINGO
A bingo ticket is divided into nine columns and three rows making it to be twenty seven free spaces in all. Now out of these nine spaces in each row five are filled with numbers and the remaining four are left blank. Columns can have either one, two or in rare cases three numbers. Numbers are placed in columns in such a way that column 1 gets numbers starting from 1 to 9, column 2 gets numbers starting from 10 to 19 and so on.
Game is looked over by a caller who calls out the random numbers. Before starting the game he describes the prizes/money at stake. The record payout for UK national bingo game was £950,000. It was awarded to a lucky player from Gala Sheffield Parkway.
Then the caller begins to call out the randomly selected numbers either by using a random number generator, by drawing out number tokens from a bag or by the help of electronic ball drawing machine. The numbers are announced in a specific format speaking the individual numbers separately and then as a group if any. For example 90 is announced as nine zero ninety to avoid any confusions.
People keep on striking off the numbers in their tickets with the help of a dabber or dauber in order to get a winning combination. Most general winning combinations are
Horizontal line which covers all the five numbers in a row
Complete covering two lines on the same ticket
Line covering all the fifteen numbers in the ticket also termed as FULL HOUSE
Instead of buying separate tickets, players in UK usually prefer to buy a book of six tickets containing all likely numbers but in different patterns.
Player calls out line or house when all the numbers required for winning have been marked off. An official checks the ticket of the concerned person for the claim. Nowadays a computerized number validating system is used by officials to save the time.
There is often a small interval between the consecutive sessions of the game. Housey is often organized in UK by churches, community clubs, charities and sports clubs in order to raise funds. It’s also a highly rewarding and ever increasing business for many companies.
Some of the largest companies with Bingo halls in UK are:
Gala bingo
Virgin bingo
Mecca bingo
Riva bingo
Sky bingo
Nowadays, online bingo is also gaining much popularity with many different big companies launching their own websites. Some of them are Ladbrokes, The Sun, and Bingolive365. Bingolive365 is the first online bingo company to offer live & interactive service to its callers all over the world.
By: Neeraj S Sharma
Bingo is a game that has been popular with the older generation for many years. Many of our grandparents may still frequent the bingo halls that are making a come back up and down the country. With the increase in leisure time that we are all seemingly enjoying bingo has been one of the largest growth industries within the leisure business over the past few years with many of the large bingo companies investing very heavily in modernizing their bingo halls and facilities to try to lure in a new wave of bingo players.
Bingo’s attraction is its simplicity, you buy a card of random numbers and a caller shouts out the numbers that are selected at random by a computer. You then mark these numbers off of your card, attempting to win the game by marking off all of the numbers on your card before anyone else. If you are the first to do so then you will win the first prize which is usually a cash prize.
There are different variations on standard “full house” bingo where you may be the winner if you mark off all of the numbers that appear in the corner of your card, some games involve just achieving a full line of your card. The variations on the games are endless, most bingo company’s offer differing variations on the bingo theme.
But bingo is not just a game to be enjoyed in a bingo hall; one of the biggest aspects of online gaming is online bingo. The game is played in exactly the same way but from the comfort of your own home where you play against people from all over the world for cash prizes.
If you are unfamiliar with how to play bingo playing online is a great place to learn as you can join one of the play money games and learn the rules and get to a level where you feel confident enough to play for real money. If you would rather not play for money and just stick with the play money games then you can do so, it is all pretty relaxed really.
If you want to play bingo with your family you can simply download one of many printable bingo card sets from the internet. There are software packages available that enable you to theme your bingo cards to a theme, perhaps a birthday or family occasion. Whatever the occasion bingo makes great entertainment for the whole family and will provide hours of fun for all.
By: Harwood E Woodpecker
