You know the rest or most of us, our first encounter with Bingo is as a farmer’
s dog. Bingo’s legacy as a children’s campfire song is undeniable.
As we grew up, so did that dog. Bingo mutated from a song to a game. Five
column cards filled with random numbers became the essential game of
chance. That dog’s name became a shout of victory, filled with the joy and
satisfaction of beating the odds.
For several decades, bingo was played in large halls, where hundreds of
people played on game cards of cheap cardboard, hoping for the big score.
Over the past decade, the game that owns the name of a farmer’s dog has
made the jump from the VFW to the WWW. Bingo as a song is still tailor-made
for young kids at the campfire, but the game has changed with the times and
moved online
. Bingo has always been one of America’s hidden pastimes. According to
IGWB (http://www.igwb.com), an estimated 1.6 billion people attended bingo
halls across the country in 2003. To put things in perspective, that staggering
attendance number is almost more than the amount of people who attended
movie theaters and bowling alleys, combined.
Over the past four years, the number of bingo sites on the internet has
increased twenty-one fold, from five in 1999 to 105 in 2003. Free bingo sites
definitely seem to be the most popular place to get a game going. According to
WhichBingo.com (http://www.whichbingo.com), over 45% of bingo sites are
free play only. Around 70% of all online bingo sites are either totally free to play,
or mostly free with a few premium, pay-to-play games.
Online bingo shows overwhelming popularity here in the States. According to
Bingo.com (http://www.bingo.com), 90% of online bingo players who use free
play sites are North American.
Eighty percent of those who played free, online bingo last year were female,
according to Bingo.com. Surprisingly, the average age of an online bingo
player (male or female) was 41, with over 80 percent of those players being
between the ages of 25 and 55. Somewhat more surprising is the low
percentage of players over 65. Traditionally, bingo is associated with senior
citizens who spend their twilight years hoping for the jackpot. However, Bingo.
com found that only two percent of free, online bingo gamers are over the age
of 65.
While grandma still finds her way to the hall to get her game on, mom is sitting
at home dialing-up to find her game. Bingo.com estimates that over 85% of
online bingo gamers access their games from home, and over 50% play every
day.
One major reason mom is addicted to the online version of grandma’s game
is because of an autoplay function many sites feature. In an autoplay game
mode, players simply let the cards play the game for them. As long as the
cards are purchased and a game screen is up on a computer, mom can do
things around the house while games are played. Also, many webpages
include ongoing chat screens in addition to their games, so online players can
get the bingo hall atmosphere right from the comfort of their own home.
Keeping active chat lines running takes up a lot of bandwidth, so we tried to
create several games without it,” said Anthony Wayne, an online consultant for
Curacao-based Bingo site BingoHouse.com (http://www.bingohouse.com).
“Each game failed miserably. Chat is very important to the success of these
games.”
Before long, grandma could even be logging on for her games. If she does, as
traffic trends seem to indicate, the online bingo market could soar in revenue.
According to Parlay Entertainment (http://www.parlayentertainment.com), 70%
of players in bingo halls already play online games. If 1% of remaining hall-
only bingo players move to the internet in the next two years, online bingo could
become a $700 million market.
The old song tells of a farmer who had a dog. That dog’s name now belongs to
a game of luck. Over the years, that game has received a new look. As more
and more bingo games move out of the hall and onto the net, players will move
right along. The future of bingo is online... and so is the money to be made.
Jonathan is a starving, struggling writer who aspires to work in public and
media relations when he graduates college. He is a marketing intern with
Advanced Telecom Services (http://www.advancedtele.com) and a freelance
Web Consultant.
- Mind Boggling Information About The Popular Bingo Game!
By Nimal Shapathiar Have you ever considered mind boggling statistics of a BINGO GAME?
The bingo game is the most popular online game in the world! Bing Crosby’s nickname
as a child was “Bingo” Screeno, a form of the bingo game, was played in movie theaters
during the Great Depression The casino game, Keno, is based on the bingo game Most
online bingo players also like to play online slot machines A majority of bingo game players
have a pet, most notably a cat In 1929, the bingo game reached North America, and
became known as “Beano” The bingo game became popular in Australia in the early 20th
century. It was known as Housie The bingo game’s origin can be traced back to 1530, to an
Italian lottery called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto D’Italia”. It is still played every Saturday in Italy In
the 1800s a Lotto game similar to the bingo game was used as an educational tool to teach
German children multiplication tables Physical exercise will tone up the body, but a bingo
game enhances the player’s mental speed, observation skills and memory. Research shows
that a bingo game keeps you in peak mental form. It provides an enjoyable social
experience, too! In the BINGO game there are seventy-five numbers broken up into five
groups of fifteen numbers each; B-1 thru 15, I-16 thru 30, N-31 thru 45, G-46 thru 60, and O-
61 thru 75. The BINGO game card has five columns corresponding to the letters B-I-N-G-O.
The bingo game player’s card has twenty four numbers; five numbers pre-printed in four of
the columns under the B-I-G-O and four numbers under the N. Calculating the total number
of possible combinations yields the result that there exists
552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000. (That’s 552-million-billion-billion or 0.5 quadrillion)
possible BINGO game cards. There would be 111,007,923,832,371,000 sets of bingo game
cards with 4,976,640,000 cards (almost 55 billion) in each set. Every card in each set would
have the same twenty four numbers, but in a different arrangement on each card. If we
presume that there are six billion people in the world today, it means that there are
92,074,412,343,521,400 bingo game cards for each and every person in the world. If you
could print a million bingo game cards per second, it would take 17,505,972,382,599.7
years to print every possible BINGO game card. If you put four BINGO game cards on a
standard 8-1/2 X 11 sheet of paper, and if you spread all of the BINGO game cards out over
the surface of the earth, they would cover the earth to a depth of over 800 miles. If there
were one million bingo game cards per inch of height, and all of the possible cards were put
in one stack, the stack would extend for 1485 light-years. (A light year is 6-trillion miles.)
Alpha Centuri, our nearest star beyond the Sun, is only 4 light-years away.
Here’s some more proof.
You can have 120 different arrangements of five numbers under each of the four
columns under the B, I, G, and O. You can have 24 different arrangements of the four
numbers under the N. So, 120 times, 120 times, times 24, times 120, times 120 equals
4,976,640,000. That’s the number of bingo game cards that could exist, all with the same
twenty-four numbers, but just in a different arrangement on each card.
Doing the arithmetic then, there are 111,007,923,832,371,000 possible unique BINGO
combinations where no two cards would have the same twenty four numbers. (That’s 111-
million-million.)
Ouch! All those numbers…Now my head hurts!
Contact: Nimal Shapathiar
support@bingofiles.com
