The first recorded game of bingo was in India, where it was called Charaka Samantra and it was a variation of a game called Vastu Vati, the oldest known game of magic in the world. The Vastu Vati involved a round robin of people who sat around a table and a cloth covered board. In the US, bingo evolved to become what we know today as Bingo and evolved from being an outdoor card game played by children on church porches to a social game enjoyed by millions of people every day all over the world. Bingo evolved into two different games: American Bingo and European Bingo. In the US, bingo evolved into a fun game that featured cards containing different numbers and was called “Bingo” and in Europe, it evolved into a game called “Scratch Bingo”. In either form, bingo evolved from being an outdoor card game to being a card game played by millions of people every day.
Today, bingo has evolved to become a game that features not only cards containing different numbers, but also cards with funny rules and different colored balls. Different colors represent different results or different levels of game play, such as the Ace color that represents a win; the King color that represents a loss; and the Jack color that means the player has won but is still playing and needs to call bingo in order to claim their winnings. When the player calls, a number of Bingo balls are randomly chosen from a hat and are then drawn and placed in a player’s column or dealt from a banker.
In early years of bingo, there were literally thousands of different words used to describe different games. Some of these words included: Caballero (a term used to describe the card dealers), Jokers (an obsolete term used to describe the licensed dealers) and Teller (used to describe the dealers themselves). In recent years, the most common terminology used to describe the game is “Bingo.” It is essentially a word used to describe the card deck used to play the game. The earliest term for a game of bingo was the “Poker.”
Bingo is quickly becoming the most popular social networking site in the world. Millions of individuals log on to Bingo sites everyday. This makes the competition between Bingo sites intense, especially since Yahoo and Facebook have taken an interest in Bingo. As such many Bingo players have created their own accounts on social networking sites such as Yahoo! Or LinkedIn. As a result, Bingo players can easily compete with each other via Bingo.
The mechanics of the game are easy enough to grasp. For instance, players take a pre-determined number of turns and at the end of the players will reveal the numbers hidden on the inside of their Bingo cards. Players must call bingo when they discover those numbers or pass time by guessing the numbers without actually knowing if they are correct.
When playing Bingo, it is important to remember that the higher number of points one has on their bingo card, the more likely they are to win. The first few players on each team will alternate turns based on how many visible Bingo cards there are on the playing field. The winning team will be the team with the most visible Bingo cards after the last player finishes. Winning requires strategy, luck, and a keen eye to identify which numbers are revealed on Bingo cards.
