Millions of people play bingo at gambling halls, churches, carnivals and other places.  Every week or several times a week groups of women and men go to their favorite places to play bingo.  Bingo provides them with a social outing, entertainment and a chance to win some money or prizes. Most people have groups that they go to different places on different days with, so it’s not always the same group of people one individual is with each night at different bingos. Most bingo games are in the evening, but some are in the afternoon.  Games are even offered in the casinos on the Indian reservations.

Bingo is not a new casino game. It dates back to Italy in the fifteen hundreds where it began as a national lottery. The game quickly spread throughout Europe and on to America. In America where it was called Beano, a player accidentally called out bingo when a toy salesman was listening.  He hired a mathematician to figure out the different number of combinations and they came up with six thousand different cards and he began to market the game called bingo. The game was immediately popular with Catholic Church parishes that used it then in the Depression as they do today as a fundraiser. This is why people, as in the above paragraph, can go to bingo games at different places every night of the week if they want. Bingo games are still one of the biggest church fundraisers.

If you don’t know how to play bingo, you can learn in a few minutes.  The bingo cards have the letters B, I, N, G and O across the top of the card.  Underneath each letter are numbers.  The “B” column can have numbers one through fifteen; the “I” column can have numbers sixteen through thirty; the “N” column can have numbers thirty-one through forty-five; the “G” column can have numbers forty-six through sixty; and the “O” column can have numbers sixty-one through seventy-five.  There are five numbers under every letter except for “N” which has a free space in the position where the third number should be.  A caller pulls numbered ping-pong balls out of a machine and calls out the number.  Once a number is called it lights up on a big boards so players can check their cards against the board. Players who have the number on their card place a chip or some kind of marker over the spot.  The UK gambling game continues in the manner until somebody bingos by completing the required shape specified by the game caller. This might be a straight line from top to bottom, or side to side, a diagonal, four corners or whatever shapes that was announced. The first one to complete the required shape calls out “Bingo” and wins the prize or dollar amount for that game. If there is a tie, the winners split the pot. There has to a winner in every bingo game. They just keep calling out numbers until they have a winner.