All About Bingo!
Bingo is a very popular game of chance, played with a pre-printed card of numbers where random numbers are drawn and players try to match those numbers to the pre-printed numbers on their card.
A pre-determined winning card pattern is announced before the start of the game.
The first player who can mark their card with the random numbers called while making the pre-determined winning pattern, gets to yell out 'BINGO', and collect the pot.
Some popular bingo games include: 4 Corners where all 4 corners of a card need to be marked, The Postage Stamp where the upper left corner of the card is marked, and Full Card where the entire card needs to be marked in order to win. A Few words about Bingo history - The game can be traced all the way back to a lottery type game played in Italy during the 1500's.
By the eighteenth century, France had added using tokens, playing cards, and the reading out of numbers to the game. By the nineteenth century, Germany was using the game for educational purposes to teach children spelling and multiplication.
Online Bingo - With the popularity of the internet, playing online bingo has taken off.
Players will download bingo software to their computer, and then they will have to add funds before they can start playing. It is estimated that online bingo revenues generated over 1 billion dollars in 2010.
Tasty Bingo is the newest, freshest and most unique online bingo game currently on the internet today. It has numerous online bingo games all with sponsors from food groups. Tasty Bingo offers Bingo as well as slots, video poker, instant games, scratch cards and many others. Tasty Bingo is also offering free gifts of win or chocolates to new players who sign up and deposit 30 pounds or so in their account.
Michael Gist is a well known writer and fan of online games from United Kingdom. He writes for several important magazines about games topics such as bingo, tasty bingo, no deposit bingo and several other topics which attract attention of many readers.
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So how did Bingo start? In the United States it started as Beano. It could usually be found at county fair and boardwalks. The caller, as they are known today, would draw random numbers from a box of some sort, usually a cigar box. Paying customers would then cover numbers on cards with beans. If a player won, they would shout Beano to signify they had a straight line bingo. However bingo started first in Italy in 1530 as, Lo Giuoco del Lotto D'Italia, this means Italian Bingo. This game is still played every Saturday.
After Italy, bingo spread to France in about 1770. Here bingo was and still is called "Le Lotto". It France, it was usually played as a gentleman's sport by wealthy men. After seeing the success in Italy and France, Germany decided to use the game as a way to teach children lessons on math, spelling, and history. They would use a different version of the game with words or phrases, instead of numbers for spelling and history. This version was a huge success since children found it fun.
When bingo came to the United States in 1929, the version Beano was played in Atlanta, Georgia. One fateful day, a failing toy salesman, Edwin Lowe, was watching a carnival game and saw an opportunity before him. Lowe went home to tell his friends and family about the game. He started hosting games using small cardboard cards and rubber stamps. One of his friends go so excited during a win they yelled "Bingo" when he should have yelled Beano. Lowe was so excited about the term, the New York native renamed it bingo. He decide to start selling the game in two ways: you could pay one dollar for 12 cards or two dollars for 24 cards. Later on, he hired a math professor from Columbia University, to help increase the number of number sequences on the cards. They came up with over 6,000 different cards. It is said the professor then went insane.
Later, a Catholic Priest asked Lowe if bingo could be used as a means to raise money for the church. After Lowe gave his consent, bingo spread across the states. As bingo became a hit and people asked Lowe if they could host games, Lowe only made two requirements. If you wanted to host games, you had to pay a dollar a year and of course call the game bingo. Over 10,000 bingo games were played per week by estimate in 1934. Today it is estimated that the bingo industry has over 90 million sales per week in the US today.
Like playing online bingo games? Check the bingo sites resource .
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The history of bingo is a long and interesting story, spanning almost five hundred years. Here is a brief look of how this game of luck conquered the world.
Early Years of Bingo
Almost five hundred years ago, in the early 16th century, Northern Italy was perhaps the wealthiest and most civilized place on earth. This affluence was created by vast merchant fleets, that used Northern Italy as a hub where their goods were sold to merchants from all over Continental Europe. Many money related inventions were in this atmosphere of enterprising, like modern banking ... and the game of Bingo!
At the time Bingo was simply called "lotto", the Italian term for "lottery". Despite being much simpler than the game we know today, it still proved to be very popular. Travelling merchants spread the game to their home countries, and so Bingo started to spread around Europe.
By the 18th century bingo had become hugely popular in France, where the idle and wealthy aristocracy and intelligentsia loved gambling games of all kinds. The game played in France at the time was already quite similar to modern day Bingo. Cards used at the time had three horizontal and nine vertical rows, and the game was played by covering numbers called aloud by the caller.
Next country to catch Bingo fever was Germany, or the 39 small states that later formed Germany to be exact. There the game was reshaped into an educational tool for children. Animals and historical events took the place of numbers. These games were the predecessors of educational Bingos found at toy stores today.
Modern Bingo Is Born
United States proved to be the birth place of Bingo as we know it today. Like many other things, Bingo was brought to US by immigrants. The game was most often played at the carnivals, where it was called "beano". The name beano came from beans, which were used to cover the numbers on the cards.
Around 1930 Edwin Lowe happened by accident to witness beano being played at a carnival. Lowe, a toy salesman, immediately noticed how intensively the players enjoyed the game, so he decided to create his own copy. He played his copy of the game with some of his friends and it proved to be an instant hit. Legend says that during the Lowe's very first test game one of the players accidentally yelled "bingo!" instead of "beano". Everybody liked the funny sounding word, and thus Bingo got its name.
Lowe's bingo sets, which came with 12 or 24 cards and number tokens, proved to be just as successful as anticipated. The game needed a little more work though, as the bingo cards had only numbers, and creating new unique Bingo cards became more and more difficult. Lowe overcame this obstacle by adding the letters B - I - N - G - O to the top of the Bingo cards. This small addition makes it possible to create over 500 million billion billion unique Bingo cards!
Adding of the letters was important, but so was one little church in Pennsylvania. There one quick thinking parishioner came up with the idea of using Bingo to raise funds for the church. The fundraiser turned out to be a huge success, so churches and clubs of all kinds soon followed the example, adding to the games already huge popularity.
Bingo Today
From 1930s Bingo grew in popularity, until it peaked around mid-1970s. It is still popular and one of the few games everybody knows how to play. Bingo is played all over the world at over one hundred thousand Bingo halls.
With its immense popularity, it wasn't surprising that Bingo became one the first games to go online in the mid-1990s, when internet started to reach regular people. Nowadays playing online Bingo is a popular hobby just like regular Bingo is, with over 200 online bingo halls found on the net.
Early Years of Bingo
Almost five hundred years ago, in the early 16th century, Northern Italy was perhaps the wealthiest and most civilized place on earth. This affluence was created by vast merchant fleets, that used Northern Italy as a hub where their goods were sold to merchants from all over Continental Europe. Many money related inventions were in this atmosphere of enterprising, like modern banking ... and the game of Bingo!
At the time Bingo was simply called "lotto", the Italian term for "lottery". Despite being much simpler than the game we know today, it still proved to be very popular. Travelling merchants spread the game to their home countries, and so Bingo started to spread around Europe.
By the 18th century bingo had become hugely popular in France, where the idle and wealthy aristocracy and intelligentsia loved gambling games of all kinds. The game played in France at the time was already quite similar to modern day Bingo. Cards used at the time had three horizontal and nine vertical rows, and the game was played by covering numbers called aloud by the caller.
Next country to catch Bingo fever was Germany, or the 39 small states that later formed Germany to be exact. There the game was reshaped into an educational tool for children. Animals and historical events took the place of numbers. These games were the predecessors of educational Bingos found at toy stores today.
Modern Bingo Is Born
United States proved to be the birth place of Bingo as we know it today. Like many other things, Bingo was brought to US by immigrants. The game was most often played at the carnivals, where it was called "beano". The name beano came from beans, which were used to cover the numbers on the cards.
Around 1930 Edwin Lowe happened by accident to witness beano being played at a carnival. Lowe, a toy salesman, immediately noticed how intensively the players enjoyed the game, so he decided to create his own copy. He played his copy of the game with some of his friends and it proved to be an instant hit. Legend says that during the Lowe's very first test game one of the players accidentally yelled "bingo!" instead of "beano". Everybody liked the funny sounding word, and thus Bingo got its name.
Lowe's bingo sets, which came with 12 or 24 cards and number tokens, proved to be just as successful as anticipated. The game needed a little more work though, as the bingo cards had only numbers, and creating new unique Bingo cards became more and more difficult. Lowe overcame this obstacle by adding the letters B - I - N - G - O to the top of the Bingo cards. This small addition makes it possible to create over 500 million billion billion unique Bingo cards!
Adding of the letters was important, but so was one little church in Pennsylvania. There one quick thinking parishioner came up with the idea of using Bingo to raise funds for the church. The fundraiser turned out to be a huge success, so churches and clubs of all kinds soon followed the example, adding to the games already huge popularity.
From 1930s Bingo grew in popularity, until it peaked around mid-1970s. It is still popular and one of the few games everybody knows how to play. Bingo is played all over the world at over one hundred thousand Bingo halls.
With its immense popularity, it wasn't surprising that Bingo became one the first games to go online in the mid-1990s, when internet started to reach regular people. Nowadays playing online Bingo is a popular hobby just like regular Bingo is, with over 200 online bingo halls found on the net.
In addition to being an active bingo player and a proud mum, Tracy still find time to write about online bingo.
