Rules And History Of Bingo

Online bingo as it is played today came from a game played at a carnival near Atlanta in 1929. A man called Edwin Lowe noticed that the players were very engaged in the game, which was being ran by someone called Beano. Lowe re-created the game and showed it to his friends Shane Warne. The story goes that one of his friends yelled out 'Bingo' instead of 'Beano' when they completed their card, and the name stuck. The first Lowe Bingo Games were available for $1 for a 12 card set, and $2 for the 24 card version. By the 1940s the game was a massive hit across the country, and Lowe was allowing other companies to run games and use the name 'Bingo' for just $1 per year. By the 19th century the game had reached Germany, where it was used to educate children and help them with spelling, animal names, and basic multiplication. The history of bingo can be traced back to an Italian game called 'Lo Giuoco Code Loto' – a form of lottery game played in the 16th century. The game spread across Europe, and a form of the game where used playing cards and tokens, and added the reading out of numbers, was found in France in the 18th century. When you play bingo at a bricks-and-mortar bingo hall, you will be given a card with a grid containing a randomly generated combination of numbers. You will then be told by the host of the game, known as the 'bingo caller' what patterns are winning ones – usually lines offer a small prize, and filling the entire card offers the biggest prize. The bingo caller will be standing next to a container full of balls, and will pull one out at a time and read out the number marked on the ball. Each player searches for the number, and marks it off on their card if they have it. When a player has managed to fill in enough numbers to get one of the agreed patterns, they will shout out the name of the pattern – for example 'One line', or, for a full card 'Bingo'. Playing online bingo is very similar – the host usually takes part in chat in the game chat room, and the players mark off the numbers on a 'virtual' card on the screen. Bingo games online are often quite quickly paced, and feature graphically interesting cards and more unusual layouts than standard bingo ticket books.