Bingo
Bingo is a game of numbers drawn at random and marked off on a card. A card pays when its marked numbers form a shape that was announced before the draw: a line, two lines, four corners or the whole card. The formats differ in how many balls are in the drum, how the card is laid out and which shapes pay, and those differences decide how long a game runs.
This page sets the formats side by side and shows where each question is answered in full. How a game is played, step by step, is in the how to play guide, and the chance of a win by any call is on the bingo odds page. Every figure on these pages is exact, averaged over every order in which the balls can come out.
Four Bingo Games to Try Free
These four run free in demo mode, with no registration and no deposit, so you can watch a draw and learn the pattern table before any money is involved. The full list is on the free bingo games page.
Five Formats at a Glance
A call is one ball drawn, so the last column counts how many balls come out, on average, before a single card completes its first prize. In a room with many cards the first win comes much sooner, and the bingo odds page shows by how much.
75-Ball or 90-Ball: Which Line Comes First
It is often said that a line comes faster in 90-ball bingo. For one card the opposite is true: a 75-ball line needs 41.37 calls on average, a 90-ball line 64.63. The claim holds only for a strip of six 90-ball tickets, which together carry every number from 1 to 90 and make a first line in 46.56 calls.
Video Bingo: One Player and a Fixed Draw
Nearly every game in our library is video bingo, a format built for one person at a screen. There is no one else in the game and nothing to race for. You choose up to four cards and a stake, a fixed number of balls is drawn, and each card collects for the highest-paying shape it finishes, according to a pattern table printed beside the cards. A card that ends the draw a number or two short then gets the chance to buy further balls. How the round works, and how likely each pattern size is, is set out on the video bingo page. Slots dressed in a bingo theme are a different game with reels, collected under bingo-themed slots.
The One Decision Video Bingo Leaves You
The numbers on a card, the balls drawn and the pattern each card makes are all out of your hands. The extra ball is not. Suppose a card is one number short of a paying shape and 30 balls remain in the drum: the next ball completes it with a chance of 3.33%, or 1 in 30. The game prices that ball from what the win would add.
The chance of the missing number arriving, what that makes a ball worth, and how to cap spending on extra balls are set out in the bingo strategy guide.
A Short History
Bingo descends from lotto games played in Italy in the 16th century, which spread across Europe as parlor and teaching games with printed cards. The American game took shape in December 1929, when Edwin Lowe, a toy salesman from New York, watched a carnival crowd near Atlanta playing a version called beano with dried beans as markers. He brought it home, went on to sell it in boxed sets, and hired a Columbia University mathematics professor, Carl Leffler, to design 6,000 cards with different number combinations so that fewer players would win at once.
In Britain the game was long known as housey-housey. The Betting and Gaming Act 1960, in force from 1 January 1961, allowed commercial bingo clubs, and within a few years former cinemas and dance halls across the country had become bingo halls running the 90-ball game.
In Brazil, a 1993 law let sports bodies license commercial bingo halls, and electronic bingo machines, a card and a fixed draw on a screen, filled many of them. A federal order banned the halls in 2004, and although the Senate rejected it, the halls lost their legal footing in the years that followed. That single-player machine is the direct ancestor of the video bingo games played online today.
Bingo FAQ
The usual account is that a player in one of Edwin Lowe's early games got the word beano wrong and shouted bingo instead. Lowe liked the new word better and sold the game under it. The story is told in several versions and cannot be proven.
30-ball bingo, often sold as speed bingo. Its card holds only nine numbers and pays only for a full card, which a single card completes after 27.90 calls on average.
Licensed online games draw their numbers with a random number generator that is tested before release, in place of the ball machine used in a hall. Each ball is equally likely to come out next, whatever came out before.
In keno the player picks the numbers, a set number of balls is drawn, and the pay depends on how many picks were matched. In bingo the numbers come printed on a card, and a card wins by completing a shape. Both are games of pure chance.
More About Bingo
What each format asks of a card, what the odds look like, and where to play free.
Every video bingo demo on the site, free in your browser with no sign-up.
One player, a fixed draw of 30 balls from 60, and a pattern table that pays each card. A row of five comes in on 2.61% of cards.
The B-I-N-G-O card and its free space: a first line after 41.37 calls on one card.
Tickets, strips and three prizes a game. A line takes 64.63 calls on one ticket, 46.56 across a strip of six.
The steps of a game, and the card in every format including 80-ball and 30-ball.
The traditional call for every number from Kelly's eye to top of the shop, where each comes from, and a glossary of bingo lingo.
The chance of a win by every call, and how the room moves it: a 75-ball coverall takes 72.96 calls on one card.
Every classic shape ranked by how long it takes, and why four corners is slower than a line.
The two choices that matter. One extra ball finds a single missing number with a chance of 1 in 30.