Anita's Bingo Blog

When Adele picked up her Ivor Novello awards yesterday, one of which was for most performed song for Rolling in the Deep, she expressed her appreciation to all the karaoke fans out there who helped to get her there.

Of course, we have the biggest karaoke contest of the year coming up next week with the Eurovision Song Contest. Even with an internationally known name like Engelbert Humperdink the UK is unlikely to make much of a dent on the leaderboard, but of course we can laugh at the pantomime of it all thanks to Terry Wogan and his worth successor Graham Norton commentating with tongues firmly in cheeks.

In the spirit of fun it is great to see Jackpotjoy offering players the chance to get in the mood for the whole affair with its That Singing Feeling promotion.

These days anyone that is familiar with Jackpotjoy Bingo will know that the site and its hosts and particularly its Facebook administrators are all about the fun they can inject into players lives and this is a classic example.

The site is allowing anyone that spends just £10 on bingo or £20 on slots, mini games or casino games to upload themselves singing along to tracks they can choose at the site when they click the ‘take part’ button. On 28th May 20 entrants will each be £1,000 better off.

That’s a generous giveaway for people larking about and having a bit of fun karaoke style and is a great example of how Jackpotjoy is striving to bring something new to the online bingo arena and long may it continue I say.

WhichBingoAnita

Because I have to check out so many online bingo sites I spend my bingo funds at lots of different places and as such am never in much of a position to establish myself as a loyal player and move up the VIP status ladders. This is quite a shame as I understand that big spenders can enjoy some really big perks with many sites – but that is a theme I will revisit later.

What has prompted this train of thought is a recent encounter with the uber friendly Golden Hat Bingo.

I didn’t regard myself as a particularly regular player at this site, only having deposited a couple of times, but recently I was looking for ways to stretch those funds a bit further and remembered the Golden Hat Bingo No Lose Hour that takes place every Wednesday from 7pm to 8pm. This is great – it’s like getting a 100% deposit bonus. If you lose during the hour you get the full value of what you’ve spent across the whole site in that hour back at 8.01pm to play again!

That gave me the chance to play over a couple of more days and somehow I earned some free tickets into the Monday Night Madness session. This is a session from 7pm to 8pm on a Monday when Golden Hat Bingo players get to take part in their own little tournament worth £80 and lots of prizes are given away in chat games. Points are awarded for game wins and the three players with the most points at the end of the hour get £50, £20 and £10 in bingo bonus.

This week there were loads of extra treats as the site has been suffering from an influx of disgruntled players who have been rude and disruptive and the site was looking for a way to make things up to regular players. I’ve never been classed as a regular player before and I was quite pleased by the invite to be honest.

Golden Hat Bingo was offering a £50 Free Game, a £50 Live Prize Draw, the £80 Bingo Tournament with 4 exclusive free games and 2 x £10 One4All Shopping Vouchers – all in the space of just over an hour.

These were in the exclusive Golden Hat Bingo 75 ball bingo room too, Monties Mates and I love 75 ball bingo, so that was even better. I won a couple of coveralls and some line prizes and with just 9 points managed to take 2nd place in the tourney bagging the £20. Then in the prize draw I won one of the shopping vouchers.

People say loyalty is overrated, but I don’t agree. Little touches like this are just what is needed to ensure that players feel welcome and valued and long may it continue, whether at Golden Hat Bingo or any number of the hundreds of bingo sites out there. It is nice to have your custom valued and at last the online bingo world seems to be getting the message.

If I’m at a loose end for somewhere to play in future, there is a good chance Golden Hat Bingo will top the list if I fancy playing Virtue Fusion.

WhichBingoAnita

Regular readers may have gathered that I play quite a lot of bingo online, although I am now establishing a taste for visiting the land based clubs having found how friendly everyone is and that there is no stigma to going on your own if you need to.

What is frustrating to me is how widely different online bingo sites vary in how quickly they are prepared to let you get your hands on your winnings should you be lucky enough to win enough to withdraw.

For me the stand out successes in this area recently have been Virgin Bingo, Jackpotjoy, Boyle Bingo and Heart Bingo. By default, all the Virtue Fusion operated sites seem to have a speedy turnaround of withdrawals, but Virgin stood out for me recently as my winnings (unfortunately not a massive amount I hasten to add) were back in my account in less that 24 hours and showed up even before the deposit!

That is what I call service and in 2012 we bingo players should be demanding nothing less. In these days of ‘Faster Payments’ there is no excuse for online bingo sites hanging on to our winnings for days at a time.  Can you imagine walking out of a land based club on the promise of receiving your winnings at a later date?

We all know that Cassava sites have a way to go to catch up with the service offered by those named above, but surely it can’t be too long before they seriously have to consider their withdrawal policy that can take up to a week to complete.

If anyone has any experience of withdrawing from a Cozy Games site I would love to hear from you about how long that takes – I only ever manage to win enough to keep playing for a decent length of time before having to deposit again, so don’t play at these enough to actually reach sufficient wagering, lol.

Virtue Fusion and Gamesys have set the bar very high, give Virgin Bingo a try to see if you can experience this for yourself and let’s see how long it takes for the rest to catch up.

WhichBingoAnita

I’ve just started to seek out the best of the offers that are going to be around for online bingo players to enjoy between now and the actual Diamond Jubilee weekend, so WhichBingo readers get to choose which they want to take part in. All the main celebrations are going to take place as part of the extended Bank Holiday weekend from 2nd to 5th June inclusive.

Some of the prizes found so far involve being in London to be in the midst of the historical events taking place, so I thought I would check out what they were. There was one aspect of the itinerary that set me off in a fit of the giggles as I imagined the meetings between the Queen and her planners when her attendance was being arranged at as many as possible.

Well, there is the event most people will be aware of – the big concert at Buckingham Palace that has been organised by the BBC and Gary Barlow. That is on Monday, 4th June and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and many other members of the Royal Family will be there. That should be a good do as many big names such as Robbie Williams have promised to perform!

Sunday, 3rd June is a big day with the Big Lunch meaning there will be hundreds of street parties around the country, while in London there will be the Thames River Pageant with a thousand boats and the Queen in the Royal Barge and a Diamond Jubilee Festival at Battersea Park.

On Monday, 4th June Jubilee Beacons will be lit across the Commonwealth and the Diamond Jubilee weekend will come to a fitting finale with a full day of events in London, including a service at St Paul’s Cathedral followed by two receptions, a lunch at Westminster Hall, a Carriage Procession to Buckingham Palace and the obligatory balcony appearance and flypast.

Bear with me, I’m coming the bit that cheered me up. Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth on 6th February 1952 and the coronation finally took place on 2 June 1953. Where will the Queen be on 2nd June 2012 to mark the start of all these festivities – at the races of course. Her Majesty is attending the Epsom Derby to enjoy one of her favourite pass times as her main priority of this historic time.

I started imagining the events being put forward at the planning stage and the Queen putting her foot down with a firm hand and saying, “I don’t care what plans you have already made and how big the event is, I am going to Epsom and that is that. I’m not missing the racing. Don’t you know who I am?”

Well, it tickled me for a while anyway. I am sure, however, that Her Majesty will have a wonderful time at all the spectacular events and not just the horseracing, as she will have Prince Philip and her family around her and the love of the country and the Commonwealth will never have been more in evidence.

Enjoy the celebrations, Your Majesty, and may there be many more. (What do you mean, you don’t think the Queen reads WhichBingo?).

WhichBingoAnita

The WhichBingo team has a bit of a tradition in that when a new member of staff joins us we have a night out at the bingo. This makes for some interesting conversations as most of the team is male and, despite huge strides forward in removing the old image of bingo as being for older ladies, these young, hot blooded, testosterone fueled hunks(???) I work with would really rather be anywhere else.

That was even more the case last week when it turned out our latest recruit had never played a game of bingo before that was not online, not even as a youngster at the seaside, so had absolutely no idea how the whole thing worked. It was a totally alien world.

The good news is that Mecca Bingo at Mayfair in Leeds made the experience totally enjoyable for us all, whether we were seasoned pros or complete beginners.

Helen the Duty Manager and runner Vicky looked after us really well all night. Vicky was especially patient in explaining how everything worked to our non-bingo players throughout the session. Even to the extent of half way through the session transferring their paper books to the hand held electronic terminals as two of our party missed out on prizes by calling too late!

That worked a treat. The evening was dubbed a resounding success when we managed a couple of more wins, with our complete bingo virgin going on to win two lines and a full house prize and walking away with £115!

I’m not saying that the boys are going to be Mecca Bingo regulars, but they did enjoy themselves in the end, especially the reasonably priced alcohol and the great selection of food.

I’ll be going again soon and I’ll be on the lookout to see if any of them are there and trying to keep their new found favourite pass time a closely guarded secret!

You can find your nearest club at the Mecca Bingo online site and right now there are ten cars up for grabs by players – 5 at land based clubs and 5 more online.

WhichBingoAnita

I’m wondering if Foxy Bingo has peaked too soon with its offers for 2012. See what you think.

Facebook is a great place to connect with your favourite online bingo sites and of course I follow Foxy Bingo, because I like to play extra fun games and have the chance to win extra bingo bonus just like the next (wo)man.

Bingo players that don’t know about the Foxy Bingo Born Free promotions will be few and far between as the news has been everywhere, including on specially made TV adverts. The big ones were the three £100k free bingo games a couple of months ago and right now Foxy is in the middle of daily £10,000 free bingo games that will be running until Sunday, 29th April. Everyone that has made a deposit can log in every day and claim their free bingo ticket for the chance to win the big one.

Where Facebook comes into all this is that yesterday I was scrolling through the offers that were around and saw that Foxy Bingo was asking for votes from players regarding what freebies they wanted to see next as part of the Born Free campaign.

I sat up to take notice to see if I might be able to sneak an exclusive peek to WhichBingo readers and I had high expectations of what the list would include, but to say I got a surprise was an understatement! The list comprised:

100 free bingo cards
£5 free
A Squid
A Foxy Mug

I might have got the wrong end of the stick and maybe these were just Facebook prizes, but if not it would seem that players expectations have been raised right up and now will come crashing down again, lol.

I can’t wait to see what appears on the site on Monday when these £10,000 free bingo jackpot giveaways have been completed – log in to Foxy Bingo now and take advantage of the big free bingo prizes before they disappear!

WhichBingoAnita

Many of the bingo sites seem to be all about having fun at the moment and that makes a pleasant change from just how big can the giveaways get. Of course when fun and big giveaways come together no-one is going to complain.

I’ve been having my own bit of fun with something I’ve spotted across a number of sites and it’s made me smile so I thought I would share it with you.

I was checking out the Robin Hood Bingo TV ad and I had a good giggle at that, especially when I went to have a look at the site and Robin is there in all his glory on the home page directing people to click the ‘Join Now’ button.

Then I got the feeling that he looked a bit familiar, but couldn’t quite place where from. Not long after that I was over at the Paddy Power Bingo site and there it was. The video for the Paddy Power Home Free Hotline was playing on the landing page and the caddish and downright rude male lead had a definite look of our Robin about him I thought.

Then the Butlers Bingo big winner story broke and I visited that site for the first time in a while and there he was again in the guise of the cartoon butler. In fact the cartoon Robin Hood at Robin Hood Bingo could be the cartoon Butler’s heavier brother!

What is it about those long chins and chiselled jaws, moustaches and goatee beards that the creative people think apply directly to online bingo sites and their image?

One thing is certain though – all three have a cheeky twinkle in their eye. I don’t know about you, but of the three I think Robin Hood has the edge. It’s certainly true in this case what they say about a man that can make you laugh!

WhichBingoAnita

Most people that play either land based or online bingo will be familiar with many of the calls that are associated to the numbers generated.

There are not many people that won’t recognise ‘Kelly’s Eye’, number 1, Clickety Click, 66 or Valentine’s Day, number 14. However, while the latter two may be more obvious as to why they are used for their numbers, did you know that the number one call is related to the one eyed Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. No, me neither.

This piece of information was discovered recently at Costa Bingo, who have been doing some research to find out about all 90 numbers and where there calls originated. It makes interesting reading and while they do not list all the calls that have been associated with different numbers of the years, the ones they tell us about can be quite interesting and it’s certainly fun.

They have unearthed some less common ones, such as 33 – Sherwood Forest. I play a lot of bingo and I’ve never heard that one before. It seems that this derives from the phrase ‘all the threes 33′ being misheard sometimes as ‘all the trees’, hence the forest link. The one in most common use for this number of course is ‘dirty knee’.

The number 45 has lots of different associations. The most common of course is ‘halfway there’, but this is only relevant to the 90 ball game and seems a bit odd when used in 75 ball bingo games. You may have also heard ‘brimful of asha’ (I hear that one at CAESARS Bingo) or ‘cowboy’s friend’ in reference to their Colt 45 guns.

It’s another bit of fun from this popular bingo site. Check out the piece in the bingo news section over at Costa Bingo and at the same time you might want to take advantage of some of the free bingo games the site offers, plus the wide selection of bingo games it offers in its 50 rooms.

Let me know if you  have come across any unusual calls while you’ve been playing, or if you have a particular favourite or one that makes you giggle.

WhichBingoAnita

Not much makes me angry, but the story that Tesco ‘only’ made £2.5 BILLION profit last year and now feels the need to spend £1 BILLION in new initiatives makes me think that someone has got their priorities all wrong.

I know that the City insists on ever increasing profits and market share or share prices start to to tumble and that’s the problem. Surely there needs to be some kind of adjustment in perception by the City of what constitutes success, especially ongoing success, before institutions start offloading shares and putting companies at risk.

I once said that Tesco might go into the world of online bingo and it might offer great value. On the reception these figures got it would appear that I may have got my perception wrong and it might not have offered the great pricing and prizes I would expect as it would not generate enough profit!

Many big brands have fallen by the wayside in recent times – Woolworths, La Senza, Peacocks, Priceless Shoes, Game Group and more – and while some had huge debts, surely it is panic by investors about share prices that they themselves influence that cause the problems.

If the City accepted that smaller profits and margins are acceptable in the current climate and didn’t rush into ‘sell’ mode then shoppers could benefit from lower prices and the stores providing them would not be worried about having the rug pulled from under them. If everyone was doing the same the institutions would find new acceptable levels of profit and trading, even though they might be lower. It wouldn’t mean that they would lose money over the long term.

While Tesco is to be applauded for its plans to recruit 8,000 staff to improve customer services and for the revamping its existing stores to give them warmer colours, better lighting and more attractive signage, it is a shame that it is on the back of what are perceived to be disappointing results.

To make that level of profit when everyone is being more careful with their money should be applauded and not made out to be leading to failure.

WhichBingoAnita

A new charter airline is to launch next month and I’m not sure how popular it will be – would you fly on Bingo Airways? This is a new Polish airline so not quite sure if the ‘bingo’ comes from any translation issue, but I don’t think it does, it seems that is its chosen name.

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to have some fun with a bingo story, so bear with me, lol.

Maybe they could sign a deal with Mile High Bingo and offer special trips for couples. Or there is the other obvious tie up – Sky Bingo.

I wonder if the ‘planes will only take off if there is a ‘full house’. The in flight entertainment could be online bingo in 1st Class with Champagne Bingo as the site of choice and paper tickets and dabbers in Economy.

The destinations of the new Bingo Airways include Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt, so maybe link ups with Sun Bingo and Bingo in the Sun might be appropriate and get everyone in the holiday mood.

Now there have been many parodies of high end and low cost airlines – who could forget the Hale and Pace classic Yorkshire Airlines skit – check it out here and have a giggle. Also see if you can spot a recently deceased Eastenders character in an early outing.

WhichBingoAnita