Bingo Patterns
A pattern is the set of cells a card must have marked to win: a line, a letter, a block, the outer frame or the whole card. Halls announce the pattern before each game, and video bingo prints its patterns in a table beside the cards. Two things decide how hard a pattern is: how many numbers it needs, and in how many places on the card it may be made.
This page ranks the shapes played on 75-ball cards, then the prizes of the 90, 80 and 30-ball formats. Figures are for one card on its own. How a crowded room brings every win forward is covered on the bingo odds page.
75-Ball Patterns, Quickest to Slowest
The free space counts as marked wherever a shape passes through the center, so a line through the middle needs only four numbers. Where a pattern may sit in more than one place, as with the line, the packs and the postage stamp, any one placement wins.
Why Some Small Shapes Take So Long
Four corners needs only four numbers, yet a card takes 60.80 calls on average to make it, far longer than the 41.37 a line takes. The difference is choice. The corners are one fixed set of cells, so all four of those exact numbers must be called. A line can be completed in any of 12 places, and the first of them to fill ends the wait.
The rule: A fixed shape of k numbers on one 75-ball card takes k·76/(k+1) calls on average. A shape that may sit in many places is always quicker than that rule suggests.
The six pack shows the same effect from the other side. It needs five numbers, one more than four corners, but a block of two by three can sit in 24 positions, and so it comes in after 44.46 calls. Every fixed shape of eight numbers, the X, the plus sign, the letter T and the small frame, takes exactly the same 67.56 calls, whatever it looks like.
Prizes in 90, 80 and 30-Ball Bingo
A 90-ball line is one of the three rows on the ticket, and four corners there means the first and last number of the top and bottom rows. The 90-ball bingo page explains the ticket and the order in which its prizes are played.
The Same Shapes in Video Bingo
Video bingo games print their own shapes on a card of three rows and five columns, so their pattern tables are not the classic list above. The draw is also fixed rather than open-ended, which changes the question from how long a shape takes to whether it comes in at all. On a game that draws 30 balls from 60, any fixed shape of four numbers completes 5.62% of the time, a shape of eight 0.229%, and a shape of twelve 1 in 16,179.
As with the 75-ball rule, only the number of cells matters for a fixed shape, not its outline. The full table by pattern size, and how the draw is set up, is on the video bingo page.
Bingo Patterns FAQ
Only toward patterns that pass through the center cell. A line through the middle, the X and the plus sign use it and need one number fewer. Four corners, the postage stamp and the outer frame never touch it, so the free space gives them nothing.
Yes. Blackout and coverall are the names used for a full 75-ball card, and full house is the name for a full ticket in 90-ball bingo and for a full card in the 80 and 30-ball formats. All of them mean every number on the card has been called.
To change how long each game lasts and how the prizes are spread. A line ends a game quickly and pays often, while a picture frame or a coverall keeps a room playing for most of the draw. Halls mix quick and slow patterns across a session.
In a hall, only the pattern announced for that game pays, although in 90-ball bingo one ticket can go on to win the line, the two lines and the full house in turn. In video bingo a card collects once per round, for the most valuable shape it holds, even when smaller shapes sit inside it.