With land-based bingo, players don’t have a lot of options, they visit the nearest or one of the nearest bingo halls and they play whichever bingo variant is on offer. Online bingo changed this and that’s probably one of the reasons for its prominence. Nowadays you just need to register with one of the best bingo sites and choose from a wide range of online bingo games. Let’s have a look at the most popular bingo variants and their specifics.
90-Ball Bingo
This is a classic and if you’re a bingo fan from the UK, you are surely familiar with this bingo variant. In fact, the word ‘bingo’ in the UK is practically synonymous with ’90-ball bingo’.
A 90-ball bingo ticket features nine rows and three columns and there are 15 numbers on the ticket, five in each column. The numbers are also organised by row, where numbers 1-10 appear in the first row, then we have numbers 11-20 in the second row and so on, up until the ninth row where numbers 81-90 are featured.
90-ball bingo tickets are usually sold in groups of six, known as strips and each strip includes all numbers 1-90.
When it comes to potential winning combinations, the situation is pretty simple, there are only three possible winning combinations in a game of 90-ball bingo – One Line, Two Lines and Full House and it is pretty obvious which is which. If you get all numbers across a single row on a ticket, then you’ve won the prize for One Line, whereas if you get all numbers across two rows, that’s a Two Lines price. Finally, if you hit all numbers on a ticket you get a Full House prize which is the highest prize you can win in 90-ball bingo.
75-Ball Bingo
This version of bingo is very popular in North America. The name immediately tells us something about this variant, namely that it features 75 balls.
The layout of the ticket is the following – there are five rows and five columns, so it is square-shaped. There is one way to differentiate sub-variants of 75-ball bingo – whether there’s a number in the midmost square on the ticket or not. The games where the midmost position is empty are referred to as 75-24-ball bingo, whereas the variants where there’s a number in that position are known as 75-25-ball bingo.
The columns in 75-ball bingo are each marked with a single letter from the word ‘BINGO’, so we’ve got B, I, N, G and O columns. Unlike 90-ball bingo where only 15 out of 27 positions are filled with numbers, in 75-ball bingo all positions are numbered, except for the variants we mentioned above where the midmost position is empty.
The winning combinations in 75-ball bingo may vary, depending on the variant in question. Some of the most common combinations are ‘Double Line’ and ‘X’. The first winning combination involves getting all numbers across two lines, whether those are vertical, horizontal or diagonal lines, whereas the X is getting two diagonal lines that form the letter X. In some games you can get a win if you cover the four numbers that appear in the corners. The most valuable prize is a total blackout, which is a combination where all numbers on your ticket are drawn.
Some of the most interesting combinations in 75-ball bingo include letters from the alphabet, where the letters on the ticket should form the shape of a particular letter.
80-Ball Bingo
Many players feel that 80-ball bingo is the midground between 75-ball and 90-ball bingo and that this version can be appealing to both those who prefer 75-ball bingo, as well as fans of 90-ball bingo. The layout of the 80-ball bingo ticket is four by four, there are four rows and four columns and each of the four columns is in a different colour, the first one is red, the second is yellow, the third is blue and the fourth one is silver.
80-ball bingo is also the midground when it comes to winning combinations, as it features more combinations than 90-ball bingo, but fewer than 75-ball bingo. A Single-Line win is when you get all numbers in any direction, be that a vertical, a horizontal or a diagonal line. Getting the four numbers placed in the four corners of the ticket completes a Four Corner win, and if all the numbers on your ticket get drawn, then it’s a Full House combination we’re talking of.
30-Ball Bingo
This is the fastest and many would say the most dynamic version of bingo. With a total of 30 numbers and a three by three grid, it is easy to see why this version is faster than the other bingo variants that we’ve listed above.
The winning prizes in this game depend on the number of balls that are drawn before the game concludes. That could be 24, 22 or 20 numbers and as it is a lot more difficult to get nine out of 20 than nine out of 24, the winning combination in the latter situation pays a lot more.
