Bingo as we know it today is not very old. The game was invented sometime in the 1950s. The predecessor was Lotto which originated in Italy through a state lottery with a draw every Saturday. The first state lotto game was held in 1530 and has continued ever since.
Lotto in its various forms has since been played around Europe. In many cases as a game organized by the state to support the national treasury. Like most games, Lotto followed emigrants across the Atlantic and became popular in America. Sometime in the 1920s, a street vendor let customers play their own version of Lotto in his shop. To save resources, he made lottery tickets / bingo cards that you did not mark the numbers on, but instead you covered the announced number with a bean. He called his version of the game Beano. This name eventually turned into “Bingo”. The game became immensely popular thanks to its simplicity and excitement. Luckily, beans are no longer needed to play Bingo online.
The original idea was to call out the game’s name if you got five beans in a row. A woman who was playing got the coveted line of five beans and accidentally shouted out the wrong word, namely “Bingo!”. Now the game had its new name. Which is a good thing, because it would be difficult to play bingo online if you still needed access to beans.
To keep the interest in bingo alive, several variants of bingo have been launched over the years. One of them is Car Bingo. The game is played using a large parking lot where the players remain in their cars. The caller has a loudspeaker system to help him or her call out the numbers drawn. The players in turn signal Bingo by honking with the car’s horn.
Another more spectacular variant is Cow Bingo. The pasture where the cow or cows are roaming is divided into a grid where each square is given a number. When the cow poops, it is the number of the box in which the poop ends up that is the drawn number. Such a game can take a long time to play as the cows do not directly poop on command.
Until around 2006, Bingo was mainly played in bingo halls. After that year, the bingo halls have begun to be depopulated. However, this does not mean that interest in playing bingo has waned, on the contrary, Bingo has moved to the internet.
It’s both a good and a bad thing. This means that the bingo enthusiast has access to bingo anytime and anywhere. Unfortunately, the social part has been lost in the process. The bingo halls have been a nice meeting place on weekends or after work, being able to go there and just have a cup of coffee with your friends. With the help of chat rooms in online bingo rooms, casinos try to bridge this gap and create a social platform for the players.
As a beginner at Bingo, one coupon is enough to keep track of. The game is fast and in a bingo hall no one is waiting for you. The numbers are called out in quick succession so you have to pay attention. The bingo card is logically structured so there are some tricks to quickly see if the announced number is on your card. The card has numbers from 1 to 75. In the first column you will find numbers 1-15 and so on with 15 numbers in each column. If the announcer calls out the letter “B”, it means the it is in the first column of your card you should be looking.
