One of the reasons we all love playing bingo is that we can chat to our friends as we play, whether in an online bingo game or the local bingo hall. If you ever find yourself stuck for conversation, why not amaze your companions with some fascinating bingo facts? To help you do just that, we have compiled a list of things you most likely didn’t know about bingo. While you may not want to sit down and memorise all fun bingo facts, you are sure to pick up a few things as you read.
Without further ado, let’s get started:
Facts about Land Bingo
1Early versions of bingo were often called “Beano,” as players would use beans to mark the number on their cards. By that logic, perhaps today, we should be calling it “Dabo”.
2The name was changed from “Beano” after a woman accidentally shouted out “Bingo” after winning the jackpot.
3There is a common conception that bingo is mainly played by retirees. However, surveys often find that a large number of bingo players are actually 35 and under.
4Not only is bingo a huge amount of fun, but it has also been found to help improve a person’s cognitive abilities and reduce stress. In other words, bingo can make you smarter and more relaxed.
5This fact is rather less surprising. The jackpot is ranked as the fifth reason why people play bingo; the enjoyment factor is of far more importance.
6About 80% of bingo players are women. It seems that the majority of men are yet to discover the joys of bingo.
7It is definitely worth persevering with bingo; analysis shows that 96% of regular players win the full house prize at least once.
8There are 1,464,200 different ways of completing a winning pattern when playing with standard bingo cards.
9Christine Bradfield is thought to be the biggest-ever bingo winner. She won an amazing £1.1 million when playing at The Castle Club in Merthyr Tydfil, where she had been playing for 11 years.
10The very first bingo game is thought to have taken place in Italy in 1530. Known as “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia”, the game is still taking place today.
Facts about Bingo Cards
1In the 19th century, bingo cards were used in Germany as an educational tool to help children learn multiplication tables. However, it is doubtful the students were offered jackpot prizes.
2Bingo cards have evolved over the years. However, a toy salesperson from New York, Edwin S. Loew, hired and worked together with Carl Leffler, a professor of mathematics at the University of Colombia, to create at least 6000 different bingo cards. Some say that the work on bingo cards, ensuring that each of the 6,000 cards was unique with no repeating number groups, drove Carl Leffler insane.
3While 6,000 may sound a lot, there are actually 552,446,474,061,128,648,601,600,000 different possible arrangements of the numbers on bingo cards.
4There are regional variations of bingo cards; those used in the US differ from those found in the UK.
5US bingo cards feature a 5×5 grid, while in the UK, they are 3×9 grids.
6The different cards are due to the fact that 75 ball bingo is played in the US, while in the UK, the most common form is 90 ball bingo.
7In the UK, some people refer to bingo cards as “Housie,” a term that dates back to World War I.
8Amazingly, Americans spend more than $90 million on bingo cards every week.
Facts about Online Bingo
1As mentioned, at land-bingo venues, 80% of players are women. Online, this increases to 83%!
2People often claim that online bingo is less sociable; however, studies have found that 47% of players claim to have formed new friendships using the chat feature at online bingo sites.
3Close to half, 48%, of online bingo players will login for a game at least once a day and view it as an integral part of their daily schedule.
4Online bingo players tend to be between 35 and 40 years old.
5There is big money in online bingo. In 2010 alone, online bingo generated roughly $640 million in revenue, and about half of that came from the UK.
6There are about 4 million online bingo players in the UK, and the number is steadily rising.
7The first online bingo game, Bingo Zone, went live in 1996. It took another two years for the second game, Bingo Blitz, to go live.
Other Bingo Facts
1Catherine Zeta-Jones could only go to theatre school after her father won the funds playing bingo.
2It is rumoured that Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed playing bingo and would shout “Palace” rather than “House”.
3Many UK celebrities began their careers as bingo callers, including Simon from the band Blue, Kian from West Life, and the EastEnders actor Shane Richie.
4Superstitious bingo players will walk around their chairs three times before sitting down to keep bad luck at bay.
We hope you enjoyed our collection of interesting bingo facts, and we managed to surprise you with at least one!
Dedicated to keeping the spirit of bingo alive. I think bingo sites translate tradition into a modern context and I aim to provide our readers with the latest from the world of online bingo, including industry news, launches, and promotions.
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