| Subcribe via RSS

Glossary

October 30th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Guides

After Game – This is the last game played during a session of bingo, usually reserved as a finisher experience for the players and a wind down game.

Ball Lifter – This is a part of the bingo ball machine that is designed to lift the ball up into the shooting area so that it can be fired into the field of plays.

Blower – This is a system that uses compressed air blown through a system of tubing that will launch a ball up into the area of play where it can be selected and have its number called for the players.

Caller – This professional is the person hired by a land based bingo hall or casino that will select the numbered balls and announce to the players what the number is.

Cash-In-Prize – This is a style of prize that allows the players to win a prize that has been bought or, if in cash, created by all those who have paid in on the game.

Face – This is the gaming sheet used to play bingo and it generally has 24 different spaces, each numbered so that they can be checked off during play.

Four Corners – This pattern is created by covering the numbers in the corner of a bingo card. All four of the corners must be covered before bingo can be called.

Free Space – At the center of most bingo cards, in amongst all the numbers on the card, there is normally a blank space that players are allowed to fill automatically. This acts as a wild card would in a card game.

Game Board – This is the read out unit that is normally attached to a wall or held on a portable stand. It shows out the numbers as they are called, generally making use of either a digital number read out or a system of electronic lights. It will sometimes also show the specific pattern players are looking for as they play.

Game Room – In an online setting, this is what the specific games are called in the areas that they are being hosted.

G.T.I. or T.E.D. – This is the electronic dauber system that will help players in a game of online bingo. It will organize multiple cards for them and help keep track of how close they are to achieving bingo.

Hard Card – This is a bingo card that has been printed on a heavy type of paper such as card board and it has shutters on it to act as markers when the numbers are called.

House – A slang term in bingo lingo that refers to the venue in which bingo games are played. These are the land based operators but can also be online.

Inlaid Card – These pre-printed cards are generally in a format that contains a 4 by 4 grid and they are laid out on a table. Black discs are used to cover the numbers that are being called out.

Jackpot - This is the prize, generally in cash, that bingo players are gaming for a chance to win during a session. It is usually added to by each of the players with their admissions fee.

RNG – Stands for Random Number Generator and comes up with the numbers in the same way a bingo ball machine would.

UK Bingo

October 13th, 2008 | Comments Off | Posted in Guides

As stoic as the British people as a whole are considered to be, it certainly can’t be said that they would avoid a chance to have some fun and take a few wagers to win a great cash prize. This is probably the biggest reason that bingo is now one of the most popular forms of entertainment in all of the United Kingdom today. One of the big reasons it is so popular here is due to the huge number of clubs, halls and casinos that offer the games almost all day long. This and the fact that it is quite a social game have led many to partake in the wagering fun and create something of a grand tradition in this country when it comes to bingo. It is therefore no real surprise that a huge and growing number of the world’s online bingo web sites are based in the UK and that industry pulls in millions and millions of pounds each year, providing a lot of jobs to those in the country and even in other nations where the bingo companies have begun to expand. It is the 90 ball system of bingo that is most popular in the UK and that is why the online sites tend to cater to this form of bingo, as well. Since there is such a massive audience here, it is only natural that the sites would begin to take the British into account when they are designing out their games that they offer. This is also a place that is known for exporting culture and while no one is quite sure what made bingo such a smash hit here, it is definitely true that bingo is alive, well and really doing a number on the world of gaming as we know it today.

There are a vast array of different companies which offer games over the web these days which hail from the UK and a growing majority of them now belong to various bingo networks and have their software coming from UK sources. This means that there are massive companies such as MSN, AOL and Yahoo which rely on the UK bingo software industry to provide the gaming platforms they serve up. In addition, one of the most shocking things about the gaming audience in the UK is the fact that they are primarily girls between twenty and twenty five years old. This is a very savvy segment of the populace and they are very much up on all of the latest trends so the marketers of bingo in this part of the world have had to make sure that their offerings are always quite attractive to this group first and foremost. The fact that bingo is such a social game has led to the big level of popularity it enjoys today and since the industry is expected to bring in more than two billion pounds in the coming years there is no reason to doubt that it will keep growing at its current pace.