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Online Bingo Games

Online Bingo Games - A Complete Guide


Sue Dawson

Updated for 2024, here is our definitive guide to the different online bingo games that can be played at UK bingo sites.

Ever since bingo went online new mutant forms of bingo have been appearing, as bingo sites strive to keep their players entertained with new bingo games to stop them going off in search of new bingo sites.   A few bingo variants are genuinely different from the ancestral game, but most of them just take an existing form of bingo and add some extra features.

If your favourite game isn’t here and doesn’t seem to be available any more, it may have been withdrawn – check our retired bingo games page for suggestions on what to play instead.

  1. 90 Ball Bingo Games
  2. 75 Ball Bingo Games
  3. 80 Ball Bingo Games
  4. 36 Ball Bingo Games
  5. 50 Ball Bingo Games
  6. Playing Card Bingo Games
  7. One Of A Kind Bingo Games
  8. Add-On Features for Bingo Games
  9. Games Which Look Like Bingo But Aren’t Really

90 Ball Bingo Games

90 ball is the classic British form of bingo. Dragonfish 90 ball strip It is played on a 9 x 3 card with some spaces left blank.  Each line contains numbers in 5 of the 9 spaces.  Each column contains 0 – 3 numbers and in column 1 these are from numbers 1-10, in column 2 from numbers 11-20, in column 3 from numbers 21-30 and so on.  Prizes are given for completing 1 line, for completing 2 lines and for completing full house (all 3 lines).  This type of bingo is the bread and butter of UK bingo sites and you’ll find it at all of them, usually 24/7.  It should be noted, however, that the rules for generating 90 ball bingo cards are NOT the same at all bingo sites.  Some use a skewed number distribution (traditional in bingo halls) with the first column being 0-9, the second 10-19 and so forth up to 80-90 in the last column.  Some require the numbers in the columns to appear in numerical order and some do not.  At some sites there cannot be any blank columns.   Dragonfish, for instance, allows blank columns and does not enforce numerical order – but at Virtue Fusion there are no blank columns and the numbers have to appear in numerical order.  These differences can be seen in the screenshots: one is a strip of tickets from a Dragonfish bingo site and the other is a strip of tickets from a Virtue Fusion/Playtech bingo site. One result is that there is a smaller total number of possible 90 ball cards at Virtue Fusion, – but still an extremely large number.

Virtue Fusion 90 ball strip

There are LOTS of enhanced versions of 90 ball bingo around, mostly involving extra jackpots and/or a feature game to be played by the full house winner. On the few occasions where operators have attempted something more radical (Gala Bingo‘ s ill-fated Hot House Bingo game springs to mind) it hasn’t been popular with players.  Here are some of the popular 90 ball bingo variants:

 

Deal Or No Deal Bingo 90

Deal Or No Deal Bingo was the first bingo variant to be themed on a TV show and is still wildly popular across the Virtue Fusion network, especially the 90 ball version.  As well as the standard bingo cards and regular prizes, the red boxes of the TV show are present; 21 of these have numbers on them and these are marked off as the numbers are called, with the sums that the boxes contain also being removed from the list of possible contents.  The 22nd box is given to the player who wins full house and (assuming that only one player wins) they get to play the bonus feature game to decide whether to accept the Banker’s offer for the box, or open the box (and everyone else in the room gets to vote on which they should do to help them choose).  If they don’t decide in time, more than one player wins, or there are no other boxes left in the game then they get the contents of the mystery box.

Deal Or No Deal 90

In summer 2021 a second version of Deal Or No Deal 90 was released on the Entain bingo platform, to coincide with Gala Bingo’s move off Virtue Fusion.   It plays the same but is themed on the US version of the show so there’s no Noel Edmunds and the red boxes are replaced with gold briefcases.  On the whole players seem to prefer the original, possibly because of the theming and possibly because the prizes tend to be smaller in the new version.

In early 2024 yet another version of Deal Or No Deal Bingo was introduced at tombola (sponsors of the returning TV programme).  An important difference between this and the other versions is that in the tombola version, the prize in the bonus game goes to a randomly selected player rather than the full house winner, and they get what they voted for (or No Deal if they didn’t vote) even if the majority vote was for the other option.

Snakes and Ladders

This Virtue Fusion 90 ball bingo game, which can be played at Mecca Bingo, has a feature round that can be played by anyone with 1TG when house is called.  It’s a mini game of Snakes and Ladders and you win the cash prizes that you land on.

Snakes & Ladders Bingo

Coronation Street Bingo

The TV soap themed Coronation Street Bingo, which for many years was exclusive to Gala Bingo, is 90 ball bingo with a special room jackpot, the Golden Cobbles Jackpot. This is a bingo game within a game, with a special golden 90 ball card always in play. At the end of each game, if the ball that bingo was called on matches a number on the special card that hasn’t already been marked off, it is marked off and the FH winner gets an extra prize; a fixed £5 for any number and a room jackpot amount for a line win or full house.  In the picture, the jackpot is ready to blow and will drop when a game is won on a call of 10.  The FH winner of that game will win an additional £661.36 (or whatever the jackpot has grown to by then).

Golden Cobbles Jackpot

When Gala Bingo moved off Virtue Fusion in July 2021, the game was recreated on Entain’s proprietary bingo software.  It plays much the same but doesn’t have the video clips from the TV show of the original.  It’s now available to play at all Entain bingo sites.

Deal Or No Deal Multiplier Bingo

Exclusive to Paddy Power and sister sites, this take on Deal Or No Deal doesn’t have the 22 boxes; there’s just one box containing a mystery multiplier of to 5x, which is revealed just before the game starts.  Deal Or No Deal Muliplier Bingo also has a room jackpot that works like the Golden Cobbles in Corrie Bingo; payouts range from £10 for one number to £250 for full house, split 50/50 between the winner and the community.

Deal Or No Deal Multiplier Bingo

Emmerdale Bingo

This soap opera themed 90 ball variant was another Gala Bingo exclusive and was one of the first games only to run on the HTML 5 version of the Virtue Fusion platform.  The game itself is regular 90 ball but (as in Rainbow Riches Bingo) there is an add-on game with extra feature prizes and jackpots.  The add-on game is centered round a car which drives round and round a 90 step course; at the end of each game the car moves a number of steps equal to the number of the ball on which bingo was called.  Steps 20, 40, 60 and 80 contain community jackpots and if the car stops on one of these the jackpot is shared between all those with tickets to the game.  Step 90 contains a progressive jackpot which is paid to the FH winner of the game in question.  Players also collect Country Miles representing the distance the car moves in games for which they buy tickets and when they collect 50 of these they get an Emmerdale bingo bonus. Emmerdale originally ran in a dedicated bingo room but was subsequently moved to form part of the schedule in the TV Specials Room.

Emmerdale Bingo

The Chase Bingo

The Chase Bingo is yet another HTML5 only 90 ball bingo game with an additional feature prize which was at first exclusive to Gala Bingo.  In this case the feature game is for the full house winner and is based on the TV quiz show of the same name.  The player chooses which of the three prizes to play for – 3, 4 or 5 steps from home.  The further from home, the bigger the prize but the higher the chance of being caught by the Chaser.  If the player does not choose in time, the default 4 steps is played.  A quiz sequence then takes place but as this is randomly generated, the player does not actually have to answer any questions.  If the player reaches home without being caught they win the extra prize (as well as the regular full house prize). The Chase runs as part of the schedule in the TV Specials Room.

The Chase Bingo

When Gala moved from Virtue Fusion to Entain’s own bingo software, Emmerdale and The Chase were both recreated on the new platform.  The TV Specials room is now available to play at all Entain bingo sites.

Britain’s Got Talent Bingo

This TV talent show themed 90 ball variant is exclusive to Mecca Bingo and is based on another Virtue Fusion variant, Lucky Numbers Bingo) which is no longer around.  You choose three lucky numbers and win an extra fixed jackpot when one, two or all three lucky numbers match the balls on which the line and FH wins are called. In the screenshot, 1L was won on 6 which isn’t one of the three numbers and 35 and 72 have already been called, but there’s still a chance of matching 8 on 2L or FH to win the Buzzer Bonus.

BGT Jackpots

In 2022 BGT Bingo was updated to a new version.  The new Beat The Buzzer feature replaces the three fixed jackpots and now, the aim is to finish the game with one, two or three of the special numbers NOT having been called for one of the three community shares to pay out (they are split between everyone with 6 or more tickets in play).  This makes for quite frequent community payouts.

The X Factor Bingo

Mecca Bingo’s exclusive 90 ball variant is very similar to Gala’s Coronation Street Bingo but with X Factor theming and fixed prizes replacing 2 of the progressive jackpots.  The Judges Desk, which is analogous to the Golden Cobbles, pays out £5 bonus for a number, £50 for 1 line, £100 for 2 lines and the progressive jackpot for FH.

X Factor Bingo

Cashpot Bingo

Cashpot Bingo is a Gala 90 ball bingo game.  The feature game, the Cashpot Wheel, is played by the full house winner or winners only; it awards an extra bonus prize.  The really special thing about this bingo game, though, was the £500 community bonus which dropped randomly once a day (if it didn’t, it was paid to the players with tickets for the final game before midnight).  When Gala moved off Virtue Fusion the bonus game was recreated on the new software but the community jackpot was dropped and the room became part of Gala’s daily/weekly/monthly/Bingo Boss jackpot system.

CashpotBingo

 

Age of the Gods Bingo

Age of the Gods Bingo is a 90 ball bingo game available across the Virtue Fusion network, themed on the Playtech suite of progressive jackpot slot games.  It is a standard 90 ball bingo game with a feature round where the full house winner turns over coins from an array of 9 until they match 3 to trigger a prize payout. How this is split depends on which of the 4 Gods is matched – it can be all for the winner, all for the community or 75-25 split either way.

AgeOfTheGodsFeature

Potion Shop Bingo

This fantasy themed 90 ball bingo game is exclusive to Sky Bingo and is basically a reskin of their retired Love Island themed 90 ball game.  It has a bonus collection feature and an occasional spin the wheel feature game, played by the full house winner, which can cause one of the three community jackpots to drop.

Fluffy Favourites Bingo (Virtue Fusion)

Fluffy Favourites Bingo is a Virtue Fusion 90 ball bingo game with a bonus game for the full house winner; there are three possible feature games and a slot reel animation to show which if any is awarded. All three are based on bonus rounds from the slot games and award mystery cash prizes, some quite large.

Bingo Blast

Bingo Blast is a 90 ball bingo game by Pragmatic Play without any line prizes – only full house pays out.  Instead of being called one at a time, the game starts with two “blasts” of 20 or more balls. In other words, it fast-forwards past the boring bits, or rather the bits that are boring if you can’t or don’t want to play minigames or chat during the earlier stages of the game (as often happens when you play on a mobile phone).  Snowball Blast and Beachball Blast are seasonally reskinned versions of the same game which appear at Christmas and in the summer respectively.

Bingo Blast

 

Diamond Dazzle

Diamond Dazzle is another 90 ball Pragmatic Play special.  It’s themed on pink diamonds but the gameplay is exactly like 90 ball Deal or No Deal Bingo.

Diamond Dazzle Voting
Check out the tell tale message at the top of the screen

Fab Grab Bingo

Fab Grab Bingo (also known as Lucky Fox) is a 90 ball variant where you choose 5 extra numbers.  If one of them matches the number full house is won on you win a share of a small community jackpot.

Bubble Up Bingo

Bubble Up Bingo is a straighforward 90 ball bingo game at Gamesys; when you win full house on a double number like 11 or 22 the prize value is doubled, and there’s also a jackpot that pays out when you win full house on number 7.

75 Ball Bingo Games

75 ball bingo is the version that is most popular internationally, especially in Scandinavia and North America.  It’s played on a 5 x 5 card containing either 25 numbers, or 24 numbers plus a “free” centre space.  Column 1 only contains numbers from 1 – 15, column 2 from 16 – 30, column 3 from 31 – 45, column 4 from 46 – 60 and column 5 from 61 – 75.

75 ball bingo can be played in a number of different ways.

  1. In a coverall game the player must daub all numbers.
  2. Pattern bingo is a 75 ball variant where a pattern is marked out on the card and to win the player only has to daub all the numbers that are included in the pattern.
  3. 5 line (also known as Swedish Bingo) is a 75 ball variant with prizes for 1 line, 2 lines, etc. all the way up to 5 lines.  Sometimes scoring lines are horizontal only and sometimes they can be horizontal, vertical or diagonally from corner to corner.

75 ball games can include any or all of these scoring methods.  For example, in pattern bingo rooms at Virtue Fusion bingo sites there are three prizes, for one line, the pattern and coverall. The most usual arrangement is for 5 line bingo games to have 25 numbers and other types of 75 ball game to have 24, but this can vary.  In the screenshot from Buzz Bingo, 5 line bingo is being played on a board with 24 numbers and a free centre square and the lines can run in any direction.

Buzz 75 Ball

Most UK bingo sites include 75 ball rooms, but because of the huge popularity of 90 ball there is often a smaller choice of 75 ball rooms, they may not be available round the clock and/or they may not include all forms of 75 ball bingo .  If you are a big fan of Swedish bingo try a Relax Gaming bingo site such as Unibet Bingo where the network covers Scandinavia as well as the UK.

Because there are already lots of different versions of 75 ball bingo what with the different scoring methods and all the different patterns that are available, there’s little appetite for any further bells and whistles so there aren’t many enhanced versions around.

Deal Or No Deal Bingo 75

Deal Or No Deal Bingo 75 is exactly what you’d expect – a 75 ball, 5 line version of the Deal Or No Deal bingo game with the 22 boxes feature.  In DOND 75, though, there tend to be fewer numbers left uncalled and therefore fewer boxes left unopened than in DOND 90.  Just as with DOND 90, a second version of DOND 75 was launched in summer 2021 on Entain’s proprietary bingo software, themed on the US version of the show and featuring gold briefcases instead of red boxes.

Deal Or No Deal Bingo 75

Bounce’T Bingo

Bounce’T is a 75 ball bingo game available at many Dragonfish network bingo sites . It plays just like a regular 75 ball game apart from the fact that the prize is not fixed and bounces around within a set range during the game (£10 – £30 for a 5p ticket game) regardless of the number of tickets sold.

Spirit Twister Bingo

Spirit Twister Bingo is a 5 line bingo game that was introduced at Virtue Fusion bingo sites in April 2021.  It’s designed to enable players to win little and often.  Like Mecca’s exclusive game BOB, it caps the number of players per game, running as many games in parallel as are needed to meet current demand rather than running game sequentially in a normal bingo room. This means it’s not possible to pre-buy tickets from the schedule and the game has its own tab in the lobby.

Each player in a game of Spirit Twister has the same number of tickets (at first this was 10 for a total cost of 50p and now it’s 100 for a total cost of £1) meaning that everyone has an equal chance of winning.  The cap on the number of players and the base prize pool varies; in the screenhot it’s 25 but these days it can be as low as 10.

Spirit Twister Bingo also has a mystery multiplier of up to 5x (the Spirit Animal Multiplier) which is revealed just before the game starts and applies to the full house prize only.  The background colour of the game changes depending on which multiplier is in effect.

Spirit Twister Bingo In Play

 

Slingo Bingo

Slingo Bingo by Entain is basically a super fast game of 75 ball bingo with 40 numbers called 5 at a time, plus two more calls of 5 numbers each that players can optionally buy into.  You score for the number of horizontal, vertical and/or diagonal lines you complete and the prize pool is split between all players with completed lines (aka Slingos) based on the number of lines they complete and their stake level (it’s a multi stake single ticket game).  Expect to win frequent small amounts.

Slingo Bingo Card

80 Ball Bingo Games

80 ball bingo is played on a 4 x 4 card with all spaces filled and at Virtue Fusion it looks different to other types of bingo card, with different colours for each column and shutters to cover the numbers rather than a dauber.  This is because it is based on the mechanised cash bingo games played at UK bingo halls in the intervals between live caller bingo games.  Column 1 (red) only contains numbers from 1 – 20, Column 2 (yellow) from 20 – 40 and so on.  Scoring can be all 4 columns, or any horizontal line and house.  80 ball is also found at Entain bingo sites where the scoring is outbox and full house, at Tombola where the scoring is any horizontal line and full house, and at Pragmatic Play bingo sites where the scoring is full house only.

80ballgala2

Again, because there’s already variety in 80 ball games because of the different scoring methods and because it doesn’t have the really rampant popularity of 90 ball, there aren’t many enhanced 80 ball bingo games around.

Cashline

Cashline is Mecca Bingo‘s version of 80 ball bingo (as played during the breaks in Mecca clubs). Somewhat confusingly, the regular 80 ball Virtue Fusion room is called Cashline but there’s also an exclusive mini game version (that can be played while inside another bingo room).  The mini game version runs lots of different patterns and when the game starts, the shutters cover all of the numbers that are not part of the pattern.

Mecca Cashline Mini Game

 

36 Ball Bingo Games

36 ball bingo is a recent invention, driven by two hugely influential games designed to play well on mobiles.

Pulse

Pulse – which is really what started the whole 36 ball bingo thing and has clearly had a massive influence on many 50 ball bingo variants as well (see below) – is a fast moving bingo variant which hardly looks like a bingo game at all!  It is exclusive to tombola and has 36 balls and 12 numbers.  There are two jackpots, for 16 calls and 19 calls, and a regular prize; all games are multi-stake with a range of selectable stake levels from 10p – £2 and all prizes are multiples of the stake level.  A maximum of 75 players are allowed per room and each player has one set of numbers only; these do not come on a card but on a set of floating bubbles and when a matching number is called you have to pop the bubble (this can be set to happen automatically).  Pulse has an RTP of more than 80%.

pulse

Cash Cubes

Cash Cubes is a 36 ball variant by Playtech which was launched in 2016 on what was then their brand new HTML5 bingo platform.  Each card has 12 numbers arranged around 4 cubes and the prize is for full house, with any completed cubes collected towards a bonus. A progressive community jackpot is paid if the card is filled in 18 or fewer calls.  Cash Cubes is a multi stake one ticket game; players pay 10p, 50p, £1 or £2 to buy in and the prize they get should they win is proportional to stake size.

Neither Cash Cubes itself, nor the reskin as Bouncy Balls Bingo, really captured the imagination of players and many Virtue Fusion sites have stopped offering it, but Playtech have re-used the underlying 36 ball engine a couple of times to great effect.  We’ve also seen both games make temporary comebacks for special promotions.

cashcubes2

 

Winning Headlines Bingo

Winning Headlines is a single ticket multi stake 36 ball bingo game that is exclusive to Sun Bingo.  The ticket takes the form of 12 floating newspapers and there are 30 numbers and 6 special symbols.  The Headline Jackpot is won (and split 50/50 between the winner and all other players) when all six special symbols are called in the course of the game and bingo won on the last one.  There are also room jackpots for 16 and 18 calls.

WinningHeadlines

Buzz Bingo Blast

Buzz Bingo Blast is exclusive to Buzz Bingo. It is a 36 ball game with one ticket per player and all 12 bubbles have to be popped to win – and if you think that sounds familiar, you’re right!  The Playtech 36 ball bingo engine behind Cash Cubes has been tweaked to produce something very similar to Pulse indeed.  Buzz Bingo Blast can be played from just 4p a ticket.

Buzz Bingo Blast

Morph

Morph is a 36 ball single ticket multi stake bingo game at tombola.  Instead of numbers there are 36 different combinations of colour and shape and player have to mark off 16 of them arranged in 4 groups of 4 (this is different to most other 36 balls games which have 12 numbers on the ticket).  There are prizes for 1 group and full house, and the game even has a colour blind mode so everyone can enjoy it.

Tombola Morph Game

 

Wordsearch

Wordsearch by tombola is a 36 ball bingo game that’s utterly unlike the others apart from being a multi stake single ticket game.  There are no numbers and no balls; instead you’re trying to find 9 words in an 8×8 wordsearch grid (and you can switch auto daub off if you like and find them yourself for added entertainment)..  Wordsearch has many different themes and you don’t know which one you will get until the game starts.  Hours of fun!

tombola Wordsearch
The Ocean theme in play. Mackerel has just been called, but not found on the grid yet.

50 Ball Bingo Games

50 ball bingo is played on a 5 x 2 card with all spaces filled, numbers 1-10 only in Column 1, etc.  Prizes are for full house and sometimes also for one line. The only place you’ll find common or garden 50 ball bingo these day is tombola, but there are several exotic 50 ball variants at Virtue Fusion bingo sites. Although both Entain and Pragmatic Play have also created standard 50 ball bingo games, neither are currently available to play.

Tombola 50 ball

Here are some popular variations on 50 ball bingo:

 

Coconut Island Bingo

Coconut Island Bingo is exclusive to Gala.  As a Virtue Fusion game, it was actually just straightforward 50 ball bingo dressed up with a rather attractive tropical theme (e.g. the calls were in the form of coconuts dropping from a tree and smashing open to reveal the bingo balls) and two jackpots – a fixed jackpot for bingo in 18 or fewer calls and a progressive jackpot for bingo in 15 or fewer calls.  Some games were multi-stake.

cocoisland

The Entain (post migration) version of Coconut Island is much less impressive as all of the theming and the jackpot are gone with just the occasional multi stake game remaining to make it anything more than a standard 50 ball game.

Emoji Bingo and Burst Bingo

Emoji Bingo and Burst Bingo are rooms running a 50 ball bingo variant that is exclusive to Mecca Bingo and at first they were available on mobile and tablet only.  Players are restricted to 1 ticket each and instead of 10 numbers it contains 10 emojis (Emoji) or balloon animals (Burst).  Pop them (manually or automatically) when a match happens.  The games are all multi stake, with the prize money a multiple of the chosen stake. There are also 2 progressive community jackpots (50-50 split between the winner and all other ticket holders), one for 16 or fewer calls and one for 19 or fewer calls.  This game was the first outing for the single ticket Virtue Fusion 50 ball engine and it’s pretty obvious how much it’s been influenced by Pulse (which predates it).

burstbingo2

Mystical Bingo

Mystical Bingo is exclusive to Sky Bingo and is HTML5/mobile/tablet only.  It is a multi-stake single ticket game with 50 balls and 10 numbers on the card; these appear on the backs of cute insects, a different one for each stake level.  The prize is for full house only and there is a community jackpot split 50/50 between the winner and everyone else – so although it looks quite different, this is essentially the same game as Mecca’s exclusives Emoji and Burst.

mystical2

Bingo Bowl

Bingo Bowl is another Playtech/Virtue Fusion HTML5 only 50 ball bingo game and is exclusive to William Hill.  Themed on a bowling alley with the numbers on the 10 pins, it plays much the same as Mystical Bingo but offers an additional jackpot similar to that in Coronation Street Bingo.  An extra golden set of pins is in play at all times and the numbers are marked off when someone wins bingo on a matching number; there’s £5 for marking off a number and a progressive Kingpin Jackpot for completing the set.

Brit 50 Bingo

Brit 50 Bingo is Sun Bingo‘s exclusive version of the Playtech single ticket multi stake 50 ball game.  Again, it plays like Mystical Bingo but the ticket is based on British iconography (phone box, Big Ben, the Loch Ness monster etc) against a London skyline backdrop.

Brit50Bingo

BOB

BOB aka Best Odds Bingo is a 50 ball bingo game which was created specially for Mecca Bingo and is now also at Kitty Bingo and Lucky Pants Bingo. What makes it different from regular 50 ball bingo is the limit of one strip of tickets per player and 25 players per room – when the room is full another parallel room opens and this all happens invisibly.  The prizes in BOB are modest but there is a much better chance of winning than there would be in a regular busy bingo room (72% chance of winning within an hour, they say).

BOB

Mystic Meg Bingo

Mystic Meg Bingo is a Sun Bingo exclusive based on the 50 ball single ticket multi stake bingo engine which also powers Brit 50.  Instead of numbers on a card, there are horoscope themed symbols in floating bubbles.

Mystic Meg Bingo

Bingo Beats

Bingo Beats was exclusive to Gala Bingo from late 2019.  It was based on the Virtue Fusion single ticket multi stake 50 ball game and was another Pulse-a-like with the numbers in floating bubbles.  Originally launched rather ambitiously in 4 rooms, it was soon reduced to 2.

Bingo Beats

When Gala Bingo moved off Virtue Fusion and on to the proprietary Entain bingo platform, a new version of Bingo Beats was created looking almost identical to the Virtue Fusion version and playing in 2 rooms as before.  It was subsequently rolled out to Entain’s other sites to improve liquidity but it’s still rare for either room to hit the player cap of 70 players.  As a single ticket game with tickets priced from 2p it’s certainly cheap to play but as you’d expect the prizes are very small.

Giddy Up

Giddy Up is a horse racing themed bingo game based on Virtue Fusion’s 50 ball single ticket multi stake game engine.  It’s exclusive to Betfred Bingo.

Playing Card Bingo Games

Some bingo sites run card games and while at first sight you might think them quite different from bingo, the game mechanic is exactly the same with cards being dealt from a full deck in lieu of bingo balls being called, and matched against a hand of cards in lieu of a bingo card.  While a deck of cards may be considered to be visually more interesting than an array of numbers, the games themselves are often not as much fun, because having 5 or 9 cards to mark off out of 52 or 54 involves a lower hit rate than collecting 15 numbers out of 90 or 25 numbers out of 75.  This could explain why only one such game – Cinco – is really popular.

Cinco

Cinco is tombola‘s original bingo style card game.  Each hand has 5 cards to match, each player can have up to 5 hands in play and the prize for matching all 5 cards depends on the number of hands sold.  With 5p, 10p, 20p and 40p rooms available this game can be played quite cheaply, and there is also a maximum of 75 players per room.   Cinco has three jackpots for winning in 5, 6 and 7 calls.

TombolaCinco

 

Suit Up aka Hit 52 aka Bingo Vegas aka Bingo Deal

Dragonfish Bingo 52
888’s playing card based bingo game first appeared in Spring 2016 under the name Flash Fives and is now widespread at Dragonfish bingo sites under various names, with hands priced at 5p or 10p each.  An important difference between the Dragonfish game and the other card based games is that in the other games, buying max hands is equivalent to buying a strip of tickets and in Suit Up it isn’t – in other words, when you buy 5 hands in Cinco they will consist of 25 different cards but when you buy 5 hands at Dragonfish there will be some duplicates such as the 2 of hearts in the screenshot.  It’s worse than that though – instead of the hand limit being 5, it’s a massive 96 hands, and the quick buy options are for 24, 48, 72 or 96 hands.

Dragonfish also used the 52 ball engine in two other games, neither of which are currently available.  Candylicious was a speed bingo game with all the cards replaced by different sweets.  Bingo Roulette was the 52 ball game re-skinned with a roulette wheel animation rather than being based on the 37 or 38 numbers of a real roulette wheel.

Nevada

Nevada was new at tombola for summer 2021.  It’s quite unlike the other playing card games; instead of buying one or more hands, you have just one 4×4 array of cards.  It’s also a multi stake game with buy in level from 10p to £2.  The game has 4 prizes – 1 line, 2 line, 3 line and full house – which means it lasts much longer, and is much more like a normal game of bingo, than the other playing card based bingo games.

Nevada - No Chat

 

Snap Bingo

Snap Bingo arrived at Gamesys in 2023 after a hiatus of several years following the retirement of their Flash based playing card game Super Snap.  It is another Cinco like game where players can have up to 5 hands in play, and is multi stake with hand prices starting at 25p.  As well as winning by marking off the cards in your hand, you can win a muliplier of your stake if your hand is a scoring poker hand, like the three of a kind in the screenshot.

Snap Bingo at Gamesys

 

One Of A Kind Bingo Games

The bingo games in this section are one-offs, with a different number of balls and/or a different ticket configuration to any other bingo games currently available online to UK players.  The vast majority of these truly innovative games are the work of just one operator – tombola.  As well as the games described here, they have a number of others.

30 ball bingo

30 ball bingo is played on a 3 x 3 card with all spaces filled. It’s available at Pragmatic Play bingo sites and at Entain bingo sites. Column 1 only contains numbers from 1 -10, and so forth.  The prize is for full house only and the games are usually over very quickly indeed.  Foxy 30 ball

Rainbow Riches Bingo

Rainbow Riches Bingo is a fast paced and visually rich 40 ball bingo variant themed on the much loved Rainbow Riches slot and played across the Virtue Fusion network. The base game is played on cards with 8 numbers arranged as 4 leaf lucky clovers; in most games there are prizes for 1 clover and full house. The game has two bonus features. The Wishing Well bonus is built up by a player individually when they play with at least 5 cards; they pick a magic number and if that is called during the game a coin is added to their personal wishing well. After collecting 100 coins they receive a bonus for the bingo game and another for the slot. Rainbow Clovers are extra balls that may appear during a game (there are 2 of them) and at the end of the game the number that came up determines whether the leprechaun moves 0, 1 or 2 spaces up the 50 space Rainbow track. Progressive community jackpots are won at spaces 10, 25 and 50; if the leprechaun overshoots the space 50% of the jackpot is paid out and the rest goes back into the pot.

rainbowriches

Virtue Fusion have re-used this 40 ball engine just twice. Once was for the TV tie-in Tipping Point Bingo which was exclusive to Sky Bingo and has now been retired. The other was for Day At The Races Bingo at William Hill.

Blocks

Blocks is a Tombola original.  It is a multi stake single ticket game played on a 6×6 grid with 60 balls (Blocks) which come in 6 different colours.  The aim is not to complete lines or house, but to destroy all six Blocks of one colour (any colour).  A secondary prize is given for the highest points score based on Blocks of the same colour starting adjacent to each other, or becoming adjacent as the game progresses and Blocks drop down to fill gaps.

TombolaBlocks

 

 

bingo60

bingo60 is exclusive to tombola.  In this multi stake 60 ball game, you pay for one set of tickets, with the prizes proportional to stake level (25p, 50p, £1 or £2).  The tickets you receive contain all the numbers from 1 to 60, but the unique twist is that the tickets are different sizes, ranging from the 6 number orange ticket to the 18 number blue ticket, and each ticket has its own prize and its own jackpot, fixed as a multiple of stake value (for instance, 4000x stake for winning with the 15 number purple ticket in 30 calls).

 

Potion

Potion is a rather complex and very beautiful 45 ball multi-stake single ticket bingo game at Tombola which has an RTP of more than 80%.  The aim of the game is to complete potion recipes and there are three of these per game, each with its own prize and own jackpot; players collect ingredients each time they open one of the 18 numbered bottles they start with.  When Potion was first launched, the colours of the potion bottles weren’t related to the ingredient inside, but players found this too confusing and they were later changed to match so bottle contents are no longer a mystery.

Tombola Potion Card

 

The Machine

The Machine is a steampunk styled exclusive game by Tombola, with 40 balls and two cards – or rather rotating dials.  The silver dial has 8 numbers and the gold dial, 12 and players win by completing one or both of them – or by winning the Pressure Prize after daubing 6 numbers that were at the bottom of the dial at the time. The Machine is a multi stake game with one board per player per game.

Tombola The Machine Game

Paper

Paper is a beautiful looking but fairly straightforward 50 ball penny bingo game by Tombola, with just 5 numbers per ticket.  It’s multi stake, and players can buy up to 5 tickets per game with stakes ranging from 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p.

Tombola Paper Game

Hex aka Stakeback

Hex is yet another single ticket multi stake game by Tombola.  It’s a 30 ball game with a 10 number ticket, styled as a collection of hexagonal blocks.  Destroy all the blocks to win.  In each game you play, you have a 20% chance of having your stake refunded (depending on whether you match the colour of the block on which full house is called). Because of this feature, the game has now been renamed Stakeback.

Tombola Hex

Hexabingo

Hexabingo is an invention of Relax Gaming and can only be played at Unibet and Bingo.com.  This innovative 27 ball bingo game can be played at stake levels from 50p to £100; the tickets are 3×3 grids and each game has just three players with one ticket each. To win, complete a horizontal line.  You would think that with a 1 in 3 chance of winning the prizes would be pretty small, but in every game there’s a chance of winning a big prize as there are seven possible prize levels ranging from 2x stake to 1000x stake – which one you get is determined just before the game starts.

1TG HexaBingo

 

Winter Spotlight

The puzzle themed single ticket multi stake game at Tombola has 15 numbers and 45 balls and first appeared as the limited time game Winter Spotlight just before Christmas 2021.  The run ended in February 2022 but the game has returned under another name and with various different seasonal themes.

Bloom

Bloom is actually the same game as Winter Spotlight, but reskinned so as to be almost unrecognisable.  Instead of completing a puzzle, you had to grow plants in numbered plots in a spring garden. Like its predecessor, it had interactive elements and this time there was a fun game to play while you wait for the game to start as well as the ability to fiddle with the background (for example, making it rain) while the game plays. Bloom was available from March to May 2022 and may well be back for future spring seasons.

Bloom Game Play

 

bingo40

bingo40 is another tombola game in the same vein as bingo60 – you have a set of cards (shown as coloured zones on one card with all 40 numbers on it) and each colour has its own prize and its own jackpot.

tombola bingo40
I won black and another player won magenta – yellow and cyan are still in play

Battle Royale Bingo

Exclusive to Foxy Bingo, Battle Royale Bingo has 90 numbers but is about as far removed from regular 90 ball bingo as you could possibly imagine – it’s a form of elimination bingo, where the aim is NOT to mark off all your numbers.  You buy in by choosing up to 3 numbers (or just one in the free room) and once all 90 numbers have been chosen the game is full.  The winner is the last player left in the game with a number that hasn’t yet been called.

Battle Royale Bingo Buy In

 

Add On Features For Bingo Games

These are extra features that can be applied to any bingo game with any configuration of numbers and tickets, to make them more enjoyable.

Roll On Bingo

Roll On Bingo is a twist on both 75 and 90 ball bingo that is found at Virtue Fusion bingo sites and also at the Relax Gaming powered Bingo.com. In a Roll On Bingo game, the game starts and is won as normal but balls continue to be called after the first player completes full house until a specified further number of consolation prizes (often bingo bonus rather than cash) have been won.

Bingo Royale is the Gamesys version of Roll On Bingo.  The Royal Pardon feature is triggered randomly in 30% of games in this bingo room. Instead of there being a quota of extra winners, up to 5 extra balls are called (depending on how many times the Royal Dog barks) and a community jackpot is shared by everyone who wins as a result of the extra calls.

1TG/2TG

In a 1TG/2TG bingo game, there are additional prizes.  The 1TG prize is shared between everyone who has just one number left to daub when full house is called, and the 2TG prize is shared between everyone who has just two numbers left to daub when full house is called.

Last Chance Saloon

Last Chance Saloon is a Virtue Fusion add on feature; all non winning players with at least 6 tickets in play can claim a free scratchcard at the end of the game.

Room Jackpot

The room jackpot is an extra prize that is awarded when a certain condition is met – usually getting full house in a certain number of calls or fewer.

Speed Bingo

Speed bingo is a regular bingo game (usually but not always 90 ball) with the calls done much faster than normal.

Sesson Bingo

In session bingo, you pay one price to buy tickets in advance for all the games in the session (which is typically an hour long).  Everyone has the same number of tickets and usually, several different types of bingo game are included.  Session bingo is great for managing your budget and also for sampling different forms of bingo to see which you like best.

 

Games That Look Like Bingo But Aren’t Really

One of the most important defining characteristics of a played for money bingo game is that you are playing against other real people and that one of the real people (possibly you) will win the money.  A few games that include the word bingo in their name are actually solo games where you are pitted against the house – so basically, not really bingo at all.  “Video bingo” instant win games such as Super Bonus Bingo by Microgaming and Viking Runecraft Bingo by PlayNGo, where the player selects some numbers or cards, a number of balls are released all at once and payouts are made for any matches, and slot games with a bingo card attached, like Golden Ticket Vegas by Mutuel Play and of course Slingo, fall into this category.  There are a few games, though, that despite not really being bingo capture so much of the excitement of a real game of bingo as to be virtually indistinguishabe.

Bingo Millions

Although Bingo Millions – which was exclusive to Buzz Bingo having come and gone again at Jumpman bingo sites – looked and played very much like a bingo game and even came in 90 ball, 80 ball and 75 ball flavours, it was actually a cash draw with the player pitted against the house rather than against other players.  Apart from the huge progressive jackpot the prizes were fixed, could be won by multiple players and had nothing to do with ticket sales.

Live Bingo Style Games

Evolution Gaming’s Mega Ball and Monopoly Big Baller, Playtech’s Deal Or No Deal The Big Draw and Pragmatic Play’s Vegas Ball Bonanza are bingo style games played with a live compere and balls drawn from a machine.  As with the video bingo games, a set number of balls are released all at once and whether and how much you win is not related to what happens to other players.  These games are still extremely enjoyable though due to the great atmosphere that’s created – and they also have a considerably better RTP than any regular bingo game.

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