How to speak Bingo Lingo

Half the fun of online bingo is being part of the community and chatting with fellow b-i-n-g-o fanatics.

Online bingo chat rooms are controlled areas, because it’s a safe space for folks from all around the globe to chat, come together, and be entertained by each other and the current Chat master on duty. In this virtual bingo environment, you won’t have any vocal input but will have a general Chat window at your finger tips. Be sure to make yourself heard with the comments you type in this window.

If you have always despised people writing abbreviations like LOL in emails and texts, brace yourself… Bingo is a fast-paced game, especially if you choose the Speed bingo games on offer, and you won’t have time to type in any long drawn out conversations or Shakespearian prose. Therefore you will have to learn to speak Bingo Lingo if you want to keep up with the rest of the players.

Don’t despair though; it can be quite easy to learn Bingolese. If you already enjoy chatting in chat rooms, you should know most of the terms. If you are unfamiliar with chat room lingo, you will find a myriad of abbreviations to cover almost every aspect of the conversation, and it’s very useful if you plan to get a word in edge ways.

Bingo Lingo – some popular terms:

* 10x - Thanks
* 2U2 - To you too
* ?4U - Question for you
* AFK - Away from keyboard
* A/S/L - Age/Sex/Location
* AKA - Also known as
* ASAP - As soon as possible
* BBL - Be back later
* B4 - Before
* B4N - Bye for now
* BLNT - Better Luck Next Time
* BRB - Be Right Back
* CM Chat - Moderator/Master
* CUL8R - See you later
* CYA - See ya
* DIY - Do it yourself
* EOD - End of discussion
* FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
* FYI - For your information
* GG - Good Going
* GL - Good Luck
* GR8 - Great
* IC - I see
* IMO - In My Opinion
* L8R - Later
* L8RG8R - Later gaiter
* LOL - Laughing Out Loud
* PLZ - Please
* PM - Private Message
* PPL - People
* QT - Cute
* SD - Sweet Dreams
* TC - Take Care
* TX - Thanx
* TY - Thank You
* TYU2 - Thank You & you too
* WB - Welcome Back
* WTG - Way to go
* YW - You’re Welcome
* 1tg, 2tg, 3tg etc - one/two/three numbers left to bingo
* Y - Why?

Get to know some of these terms and practise chatting while you play bingo online, and soon you’ll become an expert in Bingo Lingo – GL!

Written by Bingo Lady

Huge online bingo cash prizes

If you are not used to playing bingo online you may be unaware of the huge cash prizes you can win. The ease of signing up online is safe and secure and it allows you to get right into playing the bingo games. You will find many ways to get online bingo cash prizes. While these sites have slot machine games as well this article will focus only on online bingo cash prizes.

You will have many opportunities to play many different bingo games online, depending on which website you decide to play bingo at. Each individual bingo site has its own bingo promotions and special bingo games, usually a wide range of smaller bingo games and advancing up to the more serious progressive jackpot bingo games. You can also find huge online bingo cash prizes with coverall jackpots.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the different types of prizes it will depend on what you play and how much you pay to get into the online bingo game. You can purchase bingo cards for as little as 5 or 10p per card, or even 1p on some bingo sites, but these bingo games usually offer smaller cash prizes. It will also depend on how many people are playing the game at the same time. These factors determine what the cash prize will be. You will generally have a fairly large selection of bingo games that you can play within this group.

After you feel comfortable with these online bingo games you might want to go on to a coverall jackpot, where the first person to cover all the squares on their bingo card wins – if you can win within a minimum set number of ball calls the bigger the prize. You can play Coverall bingo games on 75 ball game of a 90 ball bingo game and your cash prize can be very lucrative. Many of the sites have an established amount you will win for this type of game, but the prize value can also be tied to the number of bingo players in the game.
The next level of online bingo play might be a progressive jackpot. The money will accrue from game to game if there is no winner. The money can become quite a large online bingo cash prize. If for instance you would have won £250 in the first game but no one was a winner this amount would be applied to the next game and continue on until someone finally wins the bingo jackpot.

Whether you are an experienced online bingo player or not you are sure to find a type of cash prize that will appeal to you. When you play bingo online you could end up a bingo millionaire if your numbers come in on a huge game!

Written by Bingo Lady

The origins of Bingo

Everybody loves to play bingo games - who doesn’t? For some people, bingo is about raising money for charity. For others, it’s about taking a small chance on winning a very large prize. Others still see the game as a great opportunity to socialise.

But where does it come from, this game we love so much? What are its roots, and how did it evolve to be the game we play today? And did you know that at one stage the game of Bingo was banned by the Catholic Church?

The game of bingo is actually hundreds of years old. Its European country of origin is mildly disputed, but it most likely dates back to around 1530, to an Italian lottery game called “Lo Giuoco del Lotto d’Italia.”

However, before 200 years had passed, the game had matured and was being played in France and Germany. The addition to the game of the ritual of calling out numbers is thought to be a French contribution. Amusingly, it gained a certain notoriety in Europe when it was banned by the Catholic Church, which for a time drove the game underground.

The birth of bingo as we know it today happened in America in 1929. A toy salesman from New York by the name of Edwin Lowe stumbled across a game called Beano being played in a carnival tent in Georgia, played with beans.

Lowe was intrigued but didn’t get a chance to play bingo as the tent was so crowded, but he went home inspired. At home, he developed the game further and invited some friends round to test it. When one of his guests became so excited that, stuttering, she yelled “Bingo!” instead of “Beano,” Lowe realised he was on to a winning idea, and began to market bingo commercially as a board game for playing at home.

Ironically, the Catholic Church who had banned the game more than a century before was the reason for the game’s current epic success. A priest who had been using the game of bingo to raise funds to repair his church’s roof approached Lowe. He said he found the standard bingo cards that came with the box set to be too limited, and requested that some more complex ones be developed.

And so the popular form of bingo we know and love today was born, with 90 balls and thousands of permutations of bingo cards. So next time you’re having a quiet moment at a bingo hall, think about the fact that you’re part of a grand tradition, playing a game that was created almost half a millennium ago.

Written by Bingo Lady

Top 10 signs that you are addicted to online bingo

I love to play bingo online, and I’m sure you do too. Mostly I play over the weekends, but I’ve been known to log on for a couple of cards on the odd weeknight too.

Last week some friends and I were having a natter over a jar down our local, and the subject of bingo came up, mostly because one of my mates bought us a round with money he’d won playing online bingo the previous week. Naturally we started ribbing him about it, in spite of the free drinks, because my luck’s been rotten lately.

Mixed in with the good-natured banter were a couple of real gems, which I thought I’d share with you. And so without further ado, and with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I present the top signs that you play too much bingo online.

1. Your eyes are red because you’ve been up too late playing online bingo, staring at the computer screen and waiting for one more number, not because you’ve been out partying.

2. A mate tells you a joke and instead of laughing you say, “LOL!”

3. You see someone cute in a pub, but you feed a bit shy. You start wishing this was a bingo chat room.

4. Having worked up the nerve, you walk over and introduce yourself using your bingo screen name.

4. For that matter, the car that you drive has a vanity plate with your bingo screen name on it.

5. After waking up, you log into your favourite bingo website before you make coffee.

6. You’re incredibly bored because there’s nobody interesting to talk to in the bingo chat room.

7. You sign into a bingo game room, and you notice that there’s more than 20 people logged in, many of them friends. The first thing you do is query the Caller about the size of the bingo pot.

8. You nag your real-life friends to join up at your bingo website so that you can hang out with them more often.

9. Someone asks you to repeat what you said, and you respond, “BINGO!”

10. You recognise and laugh at too many items on this list.

There you have it. All things in moderation, eh? See you in the bingo chatrooms …

Written byBingo Lady

Bingo number 90 aka Top of the Shop

Traditional UK bingo is played with 90 balls. The last number in the online bingo progression is 90. It is a special number in many senses, and is revered in online bingo. In following the time tested online bingo tradition of giving call numbers different nicknames, it should be no surprise that this online bingo number has the most nicknames and some of the best. For those people who had so much fun making up nicknames for the numbers, this was the final chance to make their mark. So what are some of the online bingo nicknames for the number 90?

The first can be said in two different ways, depending upon which bingo game you are at. You might hear some callers say “top of the shop” and you might hear others refer to the number 90 as “top of the house”. Either is equally correct and they are both steeped in online bingo tradition. It is easy to see where this nickname came from. If you were to list all of the possible numbers of a bingo game in order, 99 would be at the top of the heap. That is why online bingo gives 90 this special nickname for its calling.

There are some other online bingo nicknames for 90, as well. While the others made it seem as if 90 was the head of some sort of vertical ordering system, these nicknames would apply to a linear numbering system. 90, in many online bingo games, is called out at “end of the line”. Any fool can tell why this is the nickname for this particular online bingo number. There is nothing past 90, so it is essentially the last remaining digit. There are often times when this is the last number that a player needs in order to have bingo, so these nicknames take on a special significance.

All in all, you will find some very interesting online bingo calls for just about every number that there is. 90 is no exception and it is only special because of the fact that it is the last number going. If you are an online bingo player and you haven’t heard some of these cool call number nicknames, then you are really missing out. Call nicknames like this are a great online bingo tradition and they have helped to make the game what it is over the years. They are worth getting to know if only for entertainment purposes.

Written by Bingo Lady

The team of Tombola Bingo are a booming bingo bundle of surprises, as I found out this weekend when I signed up to play bingo with them. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, there’s been a lot of hype floating around the bingo industry about Tombola, and I guess I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I was pleasantly surprised, the Tombola games are really fun and refreshing - it’s nice to see a good selection of online bingo games presented in new and different formats. What’s more, as Tombola do their own bingo software, their games are totally unique and you won’t find these bingo games anywhere else online!

Their latest bingo style game just released is Roller-Coaster - wow what a thrilling ride this is! And I love the concept - 40 bingo balls each get a name, face and catch-phrase, and everytime the roller-coaster loops the loop one of them falls out - and you gotta hope it’s got one of your names on it. All you have to do to play is pick up to 4 carriages with 5 empty named seats, and wait for them bingo balls to fill up your empties.

Tombola have really gone to town on this new online bingo game, there’s even a separate flash animation introducing the new game with all the bingo ball characters, click on each bingo ball to hear their catch-phrase - cool!

Of course when you see the Roller-Coaster looping round your computer screen, one bingo ball after another falling out with a scream, and the mad chatroom buzz as everyone shouts out the names they need to call bingo - LOL much fun was had by little old me, and kudos to Tombola for a new take on the great game of bingo online.

PS. Tombola are rumoured to be having a massively hot bingo promotion lined up for December – you will NOT want to miss their Wonderland promo - soon as we have more news on this fab bingo promotion we’ll bring it to you.

Written by Bingo Lady