Slingo Bingo at Entain Bingo Sites

What Is Slingo Bingo?

Brand new at Entain bingo sites this week is Slingo Bingo, a collaboration between Entain and Gaming Realms (who own the rights to the Slingo brand).  Gaming Realms have done many collaborations with other iGaming brands but this one is a bit different; normally they take aspects such as the bonus round from popular slot games such as Rainbow Riches and integrate them into a single player Slingo game, but here they have taken the core gameplay of Slingo and turned it into a multi player bingo game where you compete with other players for a share of a prize pool.

Slingo Bingo is not the first time that a Slingo themed bingo game has been tried; years ago, Gaming Realms attempted to do something similar with a game called Slingo Boom.  That wasn’t a success for two reasons.  Firstly, despite being essentially a form of 75 ball bingo it wasn’t marketed as a bingo game.  Secondly and perhaps more importantly, it was only available on the small group of casino sites they owned at the time, which simply didn’t have a player base that was interested in bingo.   This time, neither of those apply; Slingo Bingo is being presented as the bingo game it clearly is and Entain have tens of thousands of bingo players on their books.

Slingo Bingo has been very cleverly integrated into Entain’s bingo lobby but there are a few minor differences between it and other Entain bingo rooms.  Although you can prebuy (for the base game only, not the extra spins feature), currently this is only for 2 days ahead instead of the usual 10 days and you have to select prebuy from the side menu while inside the Slingo Bingo room; it doesn’t appear on the drop down menu if you try to prebuy from a different bingo room or from the lobby and there’s no prebuy visible on the ticket purchase screen. Slingo Bingo has its own chat room, but you can switch in the chat window to any other Entain chat room. And finally there’s the minigames – instead of the usual popular slot games, there’s an array of single player Slingo games including Slingo Starburst and many others.

How To Play Slingo Bingo

Slingo Bingo is really simple and easy to play (though it’s by no means as easy to understand how the scoring works) and has clearly been designed to work well on a mobile phone screen.  It’s a single ticket multi stake game so all you have to do to buy in is choose from the 4 available stake levels, press Buy Ticket, and confirm.  The stake levels vary from game to game and currently the lowest stake level is either 10p or 25p.

Your ticket is basically a 75 ball bingo ticket, following the normal rules for number placement (only numbers 1-15 in column 1, only numbers 16-30 in column 2 etc) and without the centre square free.  Above it are 5 more spaces, and that’s where the Slingo element to the game comes in.

In a regular Slingo game, each of those spaces is a reel, which includes all of the numbers that could appear in the corresponding column plus several special symbols.  Numbers and symbols can turn up multiple times on different spins. But Slingo Bingo is not like that:

• There’s no jokers, super jokers or other special characters
• Any of the numbers 1-75 can show up in any of the spaces, but only once

So while it may LOOK like Slingo, what’s actually going on when the numbers come up is a super fast game of 75 ball bingo with numbers called 5 at a time.

The scoring, though, is very much Slingo rather than bingo. All games end after 8 spins (i.e. after 40 numbers have been called) and all players then score for any Slingos (horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines of 5) they have completed.

Then come the extra spins.  There are two extra spins costing 10p each regardless of your original stake level, and you have 10 seconds to decide whether to buy in (to both, not one at a time).  If you do buy in, you score for each additional Slingo you complete as a result of the extra spins.  So you’ll probably want to skip the extra spins if you are not close to completing any more Slingos.

How The Prizes Work In Slingo Bingo

So how much can you win?  Well, that’s where it gets complicated! Prize is Subject to Change Based On The Winning Combination is what it says on the buy-in screen, and they aren’t joking!

For a start, part of the prize pool is awarded for the base game and the rest for extra spins; the split (and the prize pool itself) varies from game to game and you can see what it is in the prebuy or by pressing an icon at the top of the play area.

The extra spins prizes are relatively easy to work out, but only retroactively.  The prize pool is divided by the total number of Slingos completed by all players during the extra spins and players get a share depending on how many Slingos they score.  For example, if 20 Slingos are completed during the extra spins and the prize pot is £5, each Slingo is worth a 5% share or 25p.  A player that completes three Slingos during these hypothetical extra spins will win 75p.  But if only 10 Slingos are completed during the extra spins, each Slingo will be worth a 10% share or 50p. Since you can’t know when you buy into the extra spins how many other players will do so or how many Slingos they will complete, you can’t know what you will win for any Slingos you complete until after the extra spins have taken place.

In the base game, a similar calculation takes place after the 8 spins have been completed but it’s much more complicated because of the different stake levels.  The total prize pool remains the same, but should you complete any Slingos your share of it is weighted according to your stake level.  The way it works is that each of the four stake levels has a multiplier – and it is worth knowing that the multipliers are always 1x, 2x, 3x and 4x regardless of what the stake levels actually are (in the screenshot, for example, the stake levels are 10p, 35p, 70p and £1).  Again, each Slingo completed during the game is worth a percentage of the prize pool but this time the multiplier is taken into account. Since the result may also be rounded up or down to a whole percentage point or penny it can be hard to understand quite what’s going on with the prizes even after the fact.

You will notice that all of the prizes are quite small (and there are no jackpots) but the flipside of that is that you will complete at least one Slingo in the base game or extra spins quite often, as a contrast to a regular bingo room where you will rarely win anything.

Given all of this, you may wish to stick to the lowest stake level and simply enjoy the entertainment – and the fast pace of the game means that there is plenty of that!

Where To Play Slingo Bingo