Bingo Games

Last Modified: Sep 26, 2019 @ 11:16 am

The History and Emergence of Online Bingo Games

Bingo games were all the hype throughout the twentieth century when the game was standardised into a favourite playoff between communities of people, either between friends, family or even strangers. Retaining this notion of maintaining unity among communities while creating a riveting game as well, bingo was popularised and largely prevalent through the ages of our grandparents. However, with the emergence of modernisation and transgression from the previously standard versions of different games onto computer screens, including football and cricket, the game of bingo has been no differently left out of the lot. At large, bingo has preserved its prevalence through the adaptation of its game into a technological one, with online bingo being the current rave throughout the UK and other countries.

two women playing online bingo on laptop

The Automation of Bingo

The advent of computerisation has brought commercial bingo casinos and halls to a catastrophic halt as the game transpired to become more popular through the course of the internet. Bingo games, in their traditional root, is a game that surfaces around variation in playing, which also kindles the element of entertainment that it is prolific in. Players are given a number of playing bingo cards on which are imprinted rows of arbitrary numerical values. Emanating from the traditional game of a lottery, bingo holds a sequential format where random numbers are called out and players who have the respectively dictated numbers on their cards are needed to mark them out with ‘daubers’, a special marker made just for playing bingo games. As such, when players have completed an entire row with those marked out numbers, they can call out ‘BINGO’ to earn their deserved rewards. However, the game is only concluded when a full card of numbers is marked out completely, earning the respective player the glory of winning.

New bingo sites have conserved the traditional root in their games with slight alterations to make the games more aesthetically pleasing as well as add a greater dimension to the original game. Cleaving to the ideal of providing convenience, online bingos have largely replaced the need to physically go and visit bingo halls and casinos to engage in this exciting game. Instead, bingo games have been redesigned so much that it can now be played in the comforts of home, with multiplayer options letting your friends and family join in easily in a shared and custom game room.

woman relaxing playing online bingo

The Initiation of Online Bingo and Bingo Today

Online bingo games actually debuted in around 2003 with the operation of the very first successful online bingo sites. From then on, the industry has gained huge popularity, notably in crowd of youths and women, as it has been evaluated that over 90% of bingo players in the UK are those below the age of 50 and about 70% of bingo players over the world are female, particularly between the ages of 20 and 25. Additionally, the online bingo games themselves garner about three million people weekly, subjecting the market of online bingo to increased universality and popularity.

Legality

The lines between bingo being a game of lottery or gambling are incredibly blurry, allowing the laws imposed on it to be rather flexible as well as compromising. Over much debate, the UK’s Royal Gambling Commissioner dictates bingo to be a ‘lottery played as a game’, and thus it has been fixated as a game of chance, which necessitates a separate licence of gaming.

Therefore, the online bingo establishment is currently licensed and regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commission, while bingo games played outside the UK have its services licensed and regulated by the Virtual Global Digital Services Limited. The Virtual Global Digital Services Limited is authorised to offer online gaming services under the jurisdiction of the Government of Gibraltar and is regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner under the laws of Gibraltar.

The Types of Bingo Games

However, the reason bingo has maintained its notability through decades is not simply due to the fact that is has been computerised and innovated according to changing tastes, but also because of its incredible variations. The games played and made available on different bingo sites are all unique and interesting. In addition, the chances to win are always considerable, especially when luck is in your favour, and what’s more is there is almost always real money involved in the rewards that you might get.

Online bingo, however, despite its large selection of games available, does cleave to a few primal types of traditional bingo. These include 30 ball, 75 ball, 80 ball, 90 ball and jackpot games. For the United States, 75 ball bingo has achieved huge fame and preference over the other lot, where this particular game consists of bingo game cards that have five columns and five rows with a total of 25 squares. The customary rule for winning this game of 75 ball bingo is for the players to mark out any line that can go either horizontally, vertically or even diagonally. Though for online bingo, the winning patterns can vary from one variant of the game to another.

For other regions such as the United Kingdom and Australia, 90 ball bingo is the fan favourite. Most bingo and their sister sites include different renderings of the traditional game but it still retains the same format of winning in almost all variations of the game available online. The difficulty level can go up a notch in this particular selection of bingo game but, it’s not to be fretted over for it still is an incredibly fun and interesting game. Here, the game cards used comprise of 15 numerical values with five numbers spread randomly over each of the three rows, totalling in 9 columns. Each row of numbers, however arbitrarily organised, still maintain a specified set, with the first column ranging for numbers from 1-9 and so on and so forth. The winner can only shout out ‘bingo’ when one horizontal column has been completely marked off, earning their respective prize, with the one who has marked off the entirety of their bingo playing card achieving the podium for the first prize while consequently receiving the full house prize.

With the major developments in technology and gaming, online bingo has been completely reinvented to make the game more of a novelty, appeasing the taste buds of the youth while also retaining its traditional and historical prestige and value. Thus, there have been implementations of bingo chat rooms and redesigned bingo balls, while also including automated daubers and such, all which ascertain that bingo’s prominence as a community game is not left out with its modification into the modern age. Therefore, bingo will remain prevalent for it is not a game that can be discarded in the dirt of a disintegrated generation.

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