There are many posts out there about various bing facts, but none of them really get into the ins and outs of bingo. If you enjoy playing bingo online, or in the real world these facts will amaze and amuse you. So eyes down, first number as we get on with this post…
1 – John Orchard (Bingo’s biggest winner)
The 60-year-old worked at his local Jobcentre until one fateful evening in December 2012. He was playing bingo online against hundreds of other hopefuls when his numbers came in, winning him £5.9 million. Orchard had only staked 30p, which isn’t even enough to buy a chocolate bar and logged off with £5,883,044.43, of which he immediately spent £40,000 on a new car.
2 – Soroya Lowell (biggest in-house winner)
She won a whopping £1,167,795 at the Club 3000 bingo hall in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire with the last number of the game “Top of the shop, 90”. Lowell treated herself to an ice cream van as well as generously halving her winnings with her next-door neighbour.
3 – Darryl Howe
Mr Howe owns the record for fastest-ever bingo win. The Brit managed to get a 15-number full house after just 23 calls, beating odds of 93 billion to claim the £18,000 jackpot. To top it off Howe had only opened his bingo account 40 minutes earlier.
4 – The Foxwood Resort U.S.A.
Located in Ledyard, Connecticut, the Foxwood is the second largest casino in the U.S. with 344,000 square feet of gaming room. This sprawling casino started as a bingo hall in 1986 and true to its roots the venue now has the largest bingo hall in the world with a capacity of 5,000. Americans on average spend more than $90 million on bingo each week.
5 – Almacenes Exito S.A
This conglomerate is the largest Colombian retail company and in 2006 they organised a massive game of bingo. The venue was Colombian capital Bogota and 70,080 participants turned up to play. Over $250,000 in cash prizes were handed out to winners, as well as holiday and apartment giveaways, and vouchers to spend in Exito stores.
6 – Coca-Cola
The soft-drink giants organized the largest online bingo game on record. The game itself was played by 493,824 members of Coca-Cola Park and was hosted in Tokyo, Japan on 3 September 2010.
7 – Women
Despite being a unisex game actual bingo players are predominately women. Women total 80 per cent of bingo players worldwide. Studies suggest that women are drawn to bingo due to them being less inclined to gamble and they like the low financial risk involved with bingo.
8 – Online Bingo
A 2009 study of the online bingo market estimated it was worth $1.95 billion as well as forecasting average growth of 14 per cent for the next three years. The biggest market for online bingo is the UK which is worth $560m in 2009. There are over 300 bingo sites available for UK users, while the Spanish online bingo market was worth $255 million and the Swedish online bingo market is $176 million.
9 – 552,446,474,061,129,000,000,000,000
This astronomically large number is the amount of possible combinations in bingo. Columbia University professor Carl Leffler was hired by American Edwin S. Lowe in 1929 to increase the number of combinations in bingo cards. By 1930, Leffler had managed to create 6,000 different bingo cards and his algorithm lives on. Rumour has it that the time Leffler spent on making these cards sent the poor man insane.
10 – Celebrities
Not only is the game popular with the everyman, it is also popular with the rich and famous. Singer Robbie Williams claims to be a fan, so does X Factor judge Sharon Osbourne. Footballing icon Cristiano Ronaldo is a self-confessed addict after playing it to help with his English and there are even rumours that Mr Rock ‘N Roll Mick Jagger likes to throw lavish bingo parties at his country pile.