Do you know what the favorite
leisure activity of young women, 20 to 25 years of age, in the UK? It’s
90 Ball bingo. The game is an absolute craze in the UK. Of course, if
you’re from the UK, you already knew that.
Naturally, since all the young
women are playing the game, you can find a lot of men, both young and
old, playing the game in earnest. Online 90 Ball bingo has been an absolute
phenomenon in the UK and has been growing by leaps and bounds since
2005.
With the huge popularity of online 90 Ball bingo in the UK, many Internet
heavyweights such as Yahoo!, AOL UK, Virgin and MSN UK have ventured
into the market and now manage their online bingo. Major British TV
shows such as “Emmerdale,” “Coronation Street,” and “I’m a Celebrity”
have also jumped on the online bingo bandwagon and now run their own
games.
The game is called 90 Ball bingo
because 90 is the maximum quantity of numbers that can be called in
the game. It is played on bingo cards which have three horizontal rows
and nine vertical columns.
The game begins with players
buying their bingo cards where numbers are spread out across the three
rows. On each row, only five of the nine spaces have numbers while four
spaces are blank. The numbers range from 1 to 90. The first column has
numbers from one to 10, the second column has numbers from 11 to 20,
the third column has numbers from 21 to 30 and so on until the ninth
column.
Once all players have their cards, the
dealer begins drawing numbers at random from a container and calling
these numbers out. Players mark each number called on their cards. The
first player who completes each of three patterns shout out “Bingo!”
to indicate that he has won the game. The dealer confirms the numbers
on his card. Once the win is confirmed, a new game begins.
The three basic patterns in 90 Ball bingo
are One Line, Two Line and Full House. The first player who crosses
off a horizontal line wins One Line, the first to cross off two horizontal
lines wins Two Lines and, finally, the player who crosses off all three
lines wins Full House. Prizes for each pattern increase in value. Naturally,
the biggest prizes are awarded for Full House games because these are
the most difficult.
In 90 Ball bingo, each player can have as many as
48 tickets. Players can also purchase a strip of six tickets which covers
all numbers from 1 to 90. This way, he is sure to cross out one number
every time a bingo call is made.
The 90 Ball bingo game is much simpler than 75
Ball bingo, which has many and more complicated themed patterns.
It’s also slower than the 75 Ball version, although it certainly isn’t
any less exciting.
