If you want to play online bingo from the comfort of your very own home, you must have a go at 90 ball bingo. If you are a UK resident, you will more than likely have come across this form of the game at some time in your life. If not, they it is easy to understand and even easier for me to explain. First some background. Online bingo has fast become one of the most popularly played games on the internet. The reason why this is so, is because it is 1. Easy to play, 2. A very social game and 3. You can win great prizes. 90 ball bingo is played with cards or tickets which contain a 27 square grid comprising 3 rows and 6 columns. The grid is printed with numbers in 15 of the squares, all randomly chosen. You don’t really get to choose, and why would you want to in a random number game? You register an online account, claim your free bingo money and play by buying your tickets with a click of the button. Tickets come in strips of 6, but you don’t have to buy 6 tickets unless this is the minimum buy-in, in a particular game. Then it is eyes-doe, time for the game.
But with online bingo you don’t have to go “eyes-down” to mark off the numbers on your card, this is automatically handled by the computer. So while the numbers are called randomly from a selection of 90, you watch to see if you win, or you start chatting and make some new friends, or play one of the many side-games on offer. These comprise of slots, and instant wins such as scratchies. At some online bingo sites you are even able to play roulette, blackjack or video poker as side games.
Well while you are doing something else or watching the game if you like, your tickets are automatically marked off and, if you get one line of numbers in a row, you win the third prize. If you win two lines of numbers in a row, you win second prize and if you win with every number on your card being called first you get the full house. If you win all three, you win all three prizes and this has been known to happen.
I suppose a historian would split the evolution of bingo into the game that it is today into a series of eras, but I am no historian, not by a long shot. So here goes. Apparently the nearest approximation to the game of bingo we play today is a lottery game which started after the reunification of Italy in the 1530’s.
In order to fund the new Government, they needed to raise money, the best way to do this without people feeling they were being taxed even heavier was to start a lottery game, where people bought tickets and if they have the right numbers, they won money. Much like our lotteries do today. Even though a lottery is a license to dream, it is also a way of getting people to pay additional voluntary taxes, to my way of thinking. If you have a look at where lottery money goes, these areas really should be the responsibility of the Government coffers. However, my political stance erring on the side of the left a bit, have nothing to do with this article.
The Italian lottery is still played today, hundreds of years later, and apparently there was only once that it was not played on a Saturday, this was at the end of the Second World War. The popularity of the game spread through Europe, because it was so popular and soon French Noblemen were playing. German children were being taught basic mathematical and language skills by means for bingo type cards. And today, bingo type games are still used by educational facilities and toy manufacturers to teach basic and even higher skills to children.
Eventually bingo was taken across the big pond to the US. It was played in county fairs and was called “beano”. A bean was placed over the number so the card could be used again. A toy salesman, Edwin Lowe, discovered it at a county fair and the rest as they say is history.
He took bingo and manufactured it for sale. Legend has it that when he tested the game on friends, someone got so excited when they won, that they forgot the word and jumped up shouting “BINGO”. The name stuck! Legend also has it that a Maths professor went nutty trying to think up as many number combinations for the cards as he could. How the game came to the UK is still under debate, but we have it and now we have it online too.
