Bingo rules

When playing online, your bingo cards are randomly selected for you. Most online bingo games give you 3 or 4 cards. Other bingo games let you take more. Every online bingo game has a caller or a display board for the bingo numbers. The bingo game pattern is also displayed. Some bingo games automatically mark the numbers on your bingo card for you.

There are 75 possible bingo numbers. Each of these numbers is represented by a ball in a large rotating bin. An announcer (also known as the Caller) spins the bin, selects a ball, and announces it to the room. The players check all of their cards to see if that number appears on their card. If it is, they mark it. When a player has a bingo (5 in a row, column, or diagonal), he or she calls out BINGO.

Player's chances of winning depend on the number of cards in the game and how many cards he is playing. For example, if a player has 12 cards in a game with 1200 cards, the chances of winning for that player is 1 in 100.

The cards

Each player has a number of bingo cards. Each bingo card has 5 rows and 5 columns thus providing 25 spaces. The columns are labeled from left to right with the letters: 'B', 'I', 'N', 'G', 'O'. With one exception (the center space is "free") the spaces in the card are assigned values as follows:

• each space in the 'B' column contains a number from 1 – 15 ;
• each space in the 'I' column contains a number from 16 – 30 ;
• each space in the 'N' column contains a number from 31 – 45 ;
• each space in the 'G' column contains a number from 46 – 60 ;
• each space in the 'O' column contains a number from 61 - 75.

Furthermore, a number can appear only once on a single card.