How To Play Bingo?

Whether you fancy making your very first trip to a land based bingo hall, or fancy registering at an online bingo site, you may be wondering how to play bingo, and at a first glance, it may seem quite daunting. 
Bingo is a straight forward and exciting number elimination game that has been entertaining people for years. Although there is no skill involved as such, there are certain “phrases”, game types and methods within the game of online bingo, and you will find a game of bingo more enjoyable if you are aware of these and understand how to play bingo completely.

The Game

Quite simply, the game of bingo is a number elimination game.
Players will have a strip or two of tickets, on which series of numbers are printed on, and as a caller or machine calls numbers, players will mark those numbers on their tickets if they appear.
In short, the aim of the game is to mark off every number on your ticket. 
In a land based bingo hall, the bingo caller will usually be a person that stands at the front of a hall calling the numbers live through a microphone as bingo players scribble their numbers off with a bingo dabber (a thick marker pen), a shutter board, or sometimes, more recently, an electronic computer machine.
 In online bingo, tickets are usually marked automatically by the computer, as a pre-recorded list of bingo numbers are called.

Game Types

There are many types of bingo, but the main three types are 90 ball, 75 ball and 80 ball bingo, and it’s 90 ball bingo that is widely played in land based bingo halls.
 If you want to know how to play bingo of the 90 ball variety, the one main thing to remember is that there are usually three rounds to this game – one line, 2 lines, and full house. A one line prize is when a player marks off one horizontal line, the 2 line prize is given when a bingo player completes two full horizontal lines, and the full house prize is given when a player eliminates all numbers on a bingo ticket. 75 ball bingo is another bingo game type that originated from the USA. It is now incredibly popular with online bingo sites. Learning how to play bingo in a 75 ball game is exceptionally straight forward. You are given a pattern – these range from letters of the alphabet, numbers, heart shapes and cover alls (a game that requires the covering of all of the numbers) and the person who completes the pattern on their bingo ticket first is the bingo winner. 
80 ball bingo is also widely played within the online bingo industry, but is also played in land based bingo halls with a ‘board’ which has shutters on. The shutters start opened, and there are four vertical columns of four numbers, with each column having its own colour – red, blue, yellow and white. Sometimes, an 80 ball game is played with one round (completing an entire board) but it is also played in columns and lines, a lot like 90 ball bingo.
Players generally close the shutters on their boards when a number is called, but in online bingo, the shutters can be automatically closed by the computer if you wish to sit back and enjoy your game.

Bingo Tickets

Bingo tickets are different depending on the game type you are playing.
90 ball tickets are usually strips which hold 6 separate bingo tickets in a list. Each 90 ball bingo ticket consists of 3 rows of 5 numbers and it’s a singular row of five that needs to be covered in order to claim the one line prize. 75 ball tickets are usually separate tickets that consist of 5 rows of 5, equaling 25 numbers in total, and 80 ball tickets consist of just 4 lines of 4 numbers. 
 Once you have learned to play bingo, you can sit back and enjoy a game that others have enjoyed for centuries. Read an article about Bingo Online here