HOW TO PLAY ONLINE
To play online Bingo you have to register on the game site. It’s the same in a Bingo Hall, or Casino, the site needs to know who you are. If you are playing for money then it is better to open an account with the Bingo site and deposit money into that account to play. Any winnings are credited to this account for you to withdraw or use to play again. Before you commit to expenses any money, many sites let you play for free, but you still need to register your details. As a new player, a site may offer you some tips and free points, which you convert to cash to start playing (typically £1 or £2).
When you join a game you will not be alone, there will be lots of other people also registered at that site who are playing, and most offer a chat room facility for you to ‘meet’ your fellow players. You may find you chat a lot more at an online Bingo site than in a traditional hall where it’s not always so easy to talk to strangers. Once you are online you will find there are sites dedicated to Bingo, and other sites that offer all sorts of gaming from roulette through to Mahjong. As a woman aged 30-50 years you’ll find that you are the main type of player, but men do play, as do other age groups. Five years ago you could count the number of Bingo sites on two hands, now there are hundreds in the UK, thousands worldwide, in line with other forms of gaming.
If you have ever been to a Bingo Hall, or played Bingo as part of a charity fundraising event, or maybe at a party, then online Bingo is basically the same game, it’s just you are most likely playing sat at home. The basics of the game are that you get, or buy, a randomly allocated Bingo card, which has grids with numbers on. Some balls with numbers on are randomly selected and you check your card to see if you have that number, and tick it off on the card. You’ll win a prize if you are the first to tick off all the numbers on your card, and it’s called a BINGO.
That’s the basic game, which can then be jazzed up to offer prizes for certain numbers, or a pattern on the card, or first person to complete a card in a set number of balls etc. To increase your chances of winning you buy more cards (but this will cost you more). When you play face-to-face Bingo in a hall, you have to check your card, and make sure you tick off the numbers (hence the caller shouting “Eyes Down”). When you play on-line, your card is mechanically checked for you, so you do not have to be quite as alert, or even paying any attention. Typically a Bingo card is very reasonably priced, at 10p to £1. Big prize jackpot games will have more expensive cards, or a minimum purchase value of £5.
