Did you know that Bingo sharpens your mental processes?
Psychologist Dr. Iseli Krauss has been studying elderly bingo players and has come to the substantiated conclusion that bingo players have honed pattern recognition skills. The people he has evaluated have scored considerably higher in a series of tests focusing both on pattern recognition and memory than the average non-bingo player.
Buzzword Bingo
There is a bingo variation often played at some risk by office employees attending drawn-out, tedious meetings. The game consists in devising a set of cards with words often used in the office meeting vernacular, the players then mark off the words as they are spoken during the meeting and whoever covers all the words in their card wins. The game is risky not only because of the fact that one is playing a game while in a meeting, but because the winner is required to yell bingo, possibly interrupting his boss mid-speech.
Bingo’s Great Grand Daddy’s still around!
That’s right! The original game from which Bingo evolved is still played in its native Italy. The game dates back to 1530!
Bingo as an educational aid:
Bingo has been used to teach a variety of subjects such as mathematical multiplication and spelling since the 1800’s.
Christmas Bingo
This peculiar holiday variation of the game plays as follows:
Each player brings three presents to the event. The presents should arrive at the facility wrapped and hidden in a brown paper bag; it is important that no other participant knows which presents each other player brought. After all participants have arrived, the presents are taken out of the undistinguished bags and put in the center of a circle formed by the players.
Before play begins, each participant receives a blank bingo card with 25 squares. Each player then fills in their card by putting any number between 1 and 40 in each empty box. No number should appear more than once on any card.
Play begins as a caller - who can also be playing - picks a number out of a hat. Each person who has that number on their card crosses the number off and selects a present from the center. After each person who had the called number has taken a gift from the center, the caller picks another number. Play continues as before until all of the presents have been selected from the center. At this point with each number called a player must 'steal' one from another player.
Play ends when the caller has picked all the numbers. Each player then gets to keep each present that they ended the game with.
Other Interesting Facts:
There are 552,446,474,061,128,648,601,600,000 (five hundred fifty-two septillion, four hundred forty-six sextillion, four hundred seventy-four quintillion, sixty-one quadrillion, one hundred twenty-eight trillion, six hundred forty-eight billion, six hundred one million, six hundred thousand) possible arrangements of the numbers on a bingo card.
The most chips one can place on a Bingo board without having a Bingo is 19, not counting the free space. In order for this to happen, only one empty cell can reside in each row and each column, and at least one empty cell must be in each diagonal.
There are two types of bingo played around the world. North America plays 75-ball bingo on a 5x5 card with the centre square usually marked 'free'. In the UK, parts of Europe, Australia and parts of South America they play a 90-ball game, marked on a 9x3 card. Both types of bingo are prominent online.
Some 50,000 of the estimated 3 million land-based bingo players now play bingo online. 90% of these are below the age of 50, dispelling the myth that bingo is for the older generation. 85% of online players are women.
A recent survey commissioned by St Minver Ltd, showed that the UK was third in a list behind the US and Japan of countries with the highest propensity playing online bingo.
Of the $150 million global market, the US provided 85% of revenues, whereas the UK was the fastest growing online market.
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Bingo has been a
popular pastime for many years throughout the world. It's great for
friends and family alike.
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The origins
of this highly popular game can be traced back to 1530 Italy. A game
called "Lo Giuoco Code Loto" was born.
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