We ask ourselves how, with hundreds or sometimes thousands of players in the room, can the same people win more than one game in quick succession. We ask ourselves how, if there are only 25 people in the room can it not be our turn to win occasionally.

While many of us content ourselves with a few choice words in the direction of the screen or some rude gestures, others take to online forums or the WhichBingo reviews pages to scream about sites being fixed or a con or having planted players. Yet very few are prepared to accept that sheer good luck is what bingo in all its forms is all about.

Over Christmas the Virtue Fusion sites had the £500k giveaway every night. I logged in to have a look via Paddy Power Bingo one night an although there were 1400 people playing, I thought what the heck, someone has to win and invested £5 in tickets. In that game the same person won the two lines prize and the full house meaning they scooped around £1200 in prize money. How many people genuinely wished them well compared to those that said no way is that possible? But who knows how many games they had played or how much they had spent for their run of good fortune?

As a bingo veteran I am sure that online bingo is no more fixed than land based bingo can be. Card allocation is random as is the number generator for each game.

In an effort to try and explain once and for all why online bingo is totally safe and above board we have been doind some investigating at WhichBingo and the results will be shown in an Editorial on the site in the next few days.

At this point we will not be including any further comments in reviews or posts from readers that refer to the perceived issue of same winners at particular bingo sites. If our reviewers are all taken at face value most of us are wasting our time playing at nearly every bingo site out there as there is a list of same winners and we are not on it so don’t stand a chance, so why bother.

If that was the case I would have had to give up playing years ago as I would be bankrupt and most certainly in the divorce courts if I did not manage to win occasionally against this band of players that are out to deprive me of what is rightfully mine!

I’ve had fun doing the digging and I hope you will enjoy the findings and I look forward to seeing what you all have to say.

Now the one thing I am not a fan of are Christmas cards. All that work choosing them, writing them; the expense of posting them, only to put them in the recycling bin a few days later.

However, this year there has been a new addition to the people I am getting Christmas card from – the online bingo sites. Now the fact that things have started arriving through the post from ‘online’ bingo sites is strange enough and I can understand that they have marketing budgets to spend to ensure that players remember them and go to play. However, I have a message to some of these sites – don’t send me stuff in the post that doesn’t involve any free bonus money for me to spend!

Now the lovely people at Love Your Bingo and Ladbrokes Bingo have been good enough to send me a card and each had a small bingo bonus attached for me to use at their sites – very small I hasten to add, but still, it’s the thought that counts as they say.

On the other hand the Gamesys group of sites, Sun Bingo, Heart Bingo, CEASARS Bingo and Fabulous Bingo have all sent a card and very nice they are too – the Fabulous one in particular was a giant sized beauty – but that’s all that was in the envelope! No little surprise to tempt me to visit the sites at all. It was very disappointing from this usually most generous of operators.

If a bingo site is going to spend money on cards and postage I would expect it to be of some benefit to the customer – if not then I would prefer it to be ploughed back into the site to offer some better money games or an extra promo. It might help to keep the postman in a job, but a communication from a bingo site without an offer I can take advantage of is more likely to be regarded as junk mail than a nice thought.

That’s my ‘bah, humbug’ moan for this year, but on the other hand let me take this opportunity to wish all WhichBingo readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Have a good one everyone.

No-one likes losing, but this seems to be the main time that players take to the online bingo forums to air grievences which is a shame as it tends to give an unbalanced view of the particular bingo sites they were playing at.

Maybe what happened to me over the last few days is why people get disgruntled, but it also goes to show just how random the playing of online bingo actually is when it comes to hitting that winning streak.

I am a member of lots of bingo sites, but obviously can’t play at them all the time as I don’t have a bottomless pit of money. So it is that sites often send out free bingo bonus to tempt me back to the site. I received £5 recently from Gina Bingo and was very grateful as I wouldn’t otherwise have been playing anywhere that night.

I put the entire £5 on a single coverall, jackpot must go game that I happened to log on in time for and the ball count was 59 numbers. I was amazed to win the £127 jackpot and was over the moon. I stayed a bit longer, played a few more games and had a few goes on the slots. I won a few small houses, but nothing to speak of and withdrew £90. (Incidentally withdrawing is now much simpler at these sites). I had no wagering to meet as I had deposited in the last 30 days – that’s something to watch out for!

A couple of days later I got a £5 offer from Bingo Blowout on the same software. Great I thought and logged in full of expectation. I had never deposited there,  so did so to avoid a potential 15x wagering requirement and got a 350% bonus. Wow, I had over £60 to play with. Guess what – I won one £16 house and even shared that. There were no more or less players than there had been at Gina, I still didn’t max out as it would have cost too much, but those numbers just didn’t come out in my favour – but that’s the way it goes.

I would have loved to have won more, but it just wasn’t to be – maybe next time. Oh, and I am looking forward to my free bingo bonus from Yes Bingo and Bingo Funland too – I am ever the optimist.

It’s always really exciting. The main events are the overall Site of the Year and the New Site of the Year Awards, but this year two new categories have been introduced – Best Online Bingo TV Ad and Best Bingo Promotion.

We want you to be able to show the online bingo providers that the efforts they go to are appreciated by the players and every vote counts. Last Year’s winner Sun Bingo splashed the news all over the pages of The Sun newspaper and in previous years Jackpotjoy and Ladbrokes Bingo have proudly displayed their winners badges all around their bingo sites.

The leaderboard positions are constantly changing and it’s really fun going on Facebook and seeing the bingo sites urging players to come and vote at WhichBingo. Chat hosts are also urging players to pop along and vote. We can always tell when a site has undertaken some activity to remind their players to vote as the positions change and the number of votes rises dramatically.

WhichBingo has also introduced a new Community feature to the site for you to enjoy and can you can join as you come along to cast your vote. I am excited by the prospect of you all interacting with us and there are points and badges to be had and a status ladder to be climbed. I look forward to getting to know you all a lot better over the coming months.

In the meantime make sure you cast your votes if you have not already done so as December is already nearly half over. Voting closes at midnight on 31st December and as Christmas approaches everyone will have other things on their mind, so do it now and make sure your favourite bingo site doesn’t miss out.

Thanks to the Americans Halloween is fast turning into a festival in its own right to rival Christmas and Easter. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the online bingo sites. It doesn’t matter which one you visit, you will not escape some reference to Halloween, usually accompanied by some really bad puns that usually only used to appear at Easter.

It’s ‘spooktacular’ this, ‘ghoulish’ that, ‘boo-nanza’ the other. There are ‘spook-tastic’ offers, rooms full of ‘fiendish fun’, you name it and you will find it at the online bingo sites.

However, having said that what I can’t fault in a lot of cases are the actual prizes that are being given away by a lot of the bingo sites this year.

At first glance when you see things like a years supply of Haribo Spooky Ghosts or Horror Mix you might think, ‘Why bother?’. Well, this is what Costa Bingo is offering, but on closer inspection it actually turns out to be £365 worth of Asda vouchers, which could be used to buy a bag of the sweets every day. However, with Christmas approaching that is a transferable offer not to be ignored. The fact that it is free to depositing players makes it even sweeter.

City Bingo is giving away a PS3 among many other things, Jackpotjoy is giving away £13,000 and tombola have £10,000 up for grabs. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

A notable late starter in the Halloween offers this year is Foxy Bingo. The king of the bad puns has really held himself back so far and is not launching a Halloween onslaught until Thursday, 27th October. The fun at Foxy Bingo will be a Trick or Treat everyone’s a winner offer and a five day House of Horror promo.

I may not like the Americanisation of Halloween, but I do like the prizes it is extracting from the online bingo sites. The pre-buy buttons could be getting quite a bit of use this week so people don’t miss out.

That’s great for me and I love that my family take an interest in my career, because have you noticed that some bingo TV ads run on such obscure and little watched TV channels, but sometimes some of the ads are so bad that I wish they would just ignore them rather than make fun of me and what I have to pay attention to in order to put food on the table, lol.

Two which have attracted this response are the Up Your Bingo TV ad and the Paddy Power Bingo ad. Check them out on our video page or You Tube Channel to see why. The Up Your Bingo ad is just bad, while the Paddy Power ad was judged as being too cliched, with the housewives being waylaid by playing bingo and as not doing anything to make it more appealing.

The reason for this focus on the TV ads is the new bet365 Bingo TV ad which has just been released and will be on show until at least Christmas. It is great that bet365 Bingo has developed the idea of its players being ‘Bingoheads’, but I cant help thinking that they should have left them in the lycra outfits and not put hair and make up on them to try and make them more lifelike.

The ad does express well what you will find once inside bet365 Bingo as it is a very friendly site, but this format would be better suited to the bingo sites that are not operating alongside a male dominated sportsbook operation, like say Bingo Fabulous or Posh Bingo, or even Chit Chat Bingo.

The pages of the bet365 Bingo site are not light and bright and fluffy like many online bingo sites and although the gameplay is great, people coming to the site on the back of the TV ads may be surprised at the heavy purple and green colourscheme and regimented styling. I would think they would be expecting a totally different kind of website to the one they land on.

I hope that doesn’t deter people from playing, as bet365 Bingo does have a lot to offer. What do you think of the new ad – be sure to let me know.

Anyway, as many of you will know we always encourage readers to read terms and conditions and all about promotions available at a site before starting to play. A couple of incidents this week show how vital this is and I thought it would be worth sharing them with you.

First we have a review from Kris about Gina Bingo. He seemed to enjoy playing and enjoyed a few wins, but fell foul of the massive wagering rules relating to winnings accrued before a deposit is made – a massive 15x. However, had he read the terms and conditions and made a deposit of just £10, there would have been no wagering requirements at all. At the end of the day, we can’t really criticise this policy as online bingo sites would soon go out of business if they had to pay out real cash to everyone that was lucky enough to win with the no deposit bonus on offer without any wagering.

Secondly, I myself forgot to take my own advice and didn’t check the promos available at Virgin Bingo when I played there over the weekend. I love the nightly Diamond Games at 9pm worth £65 each in the Marrakesh room. However, I overlooked the current reload bonus on offer and I love a good 100% reload bonus. So, I thought I would be cheeky and as a loyal player contacted Live Help to see if I could have it applied retrospectively.

This is when I found out I should have also read up on the terms and conditions of the offer too. It turns out that wagering is required before the bonus is applied – I deposited £22 – guess how much I would have to wager to release the bonus – £660!! As I wasn’t very lucky that night I had only managed to wager £36.99, so that is one reload bonus I won’t be getting and would appear to be one for the high rollers only.

I don’t know about you, but to me a 100% redeposit bonus should be just that. If there are then wagering requirements of some kind when you are spending it then fair enough, but not before it is even released. An own goal by Virgin Bingo on that one I think, but I will let them off as it is not the end of the world as at least I didn’t deposit just to get the bonus, but some people might if they hadn’t read the details of the offer.

That set me thinking about where new bingo sites get their names from and all the bingo sites that are out there that looked to the heavens for inspiration when they were being named. I thought there would be lots, but when looking more closely there turned out to be not that many.

There are the obvious candidates Sky Bingo and Sun Bingo, which coincidentally are also a couple of the biggest bingo sites out there, closely followed by Moon Bingo – that’s why I thought this would be fun and was bound to unearth a few like Planet Bingo, Meteor Bingo, Milky Way Bingo and the like, but I was disappointed in the end at the small amount I actually found.

There are a few Facebook bingo games that qualify like Jupiter Bingo, but other than that the pickings were somewhat slim. There is Star Games Bingo, BingoSky and Astro Bingo. To really stretch the theme we could include Spectra Bingo and Dream Bingo, but maybe that’s not really fair.

In the end it turns out that the main sites within this theme did not need to look around for a name as they were influenced by existing factors when they were launched.

Sky Bingo was born of its parent, Sky broadcasting, and it was obvious where they were going to get their name from as the sky is where their TV signals are beamed from the many satellites they have orbiting the earth to bring us our TV pictures.

Similarly, Sun Bingo, the online bingo version, is an offshoot of top daily tabloid newspaper The Sun and was a natural follow on the the card based game first introduced by the paper many years ago.

Neither of these sites actually trade on their astronomical names for advertising or site design purposes, unlike Moon Bingo that relishes in its namesake. Moon Bingo even uses a moonscape and astronauts in its TV advertising and a starry sky with a crescent moon as its site background. This all helps to create a very strong brand identity for what launched as a standalone bingo site.

Be sure to let me know if there are any that I have missed that might be worth a look.

Back to Paddy Power Bingo and you might like to know that they have three £500 jackpots on offer in the Sapphire room tonight as part of its Full Moon Party, one each at 8pm, 9pm and 10pm. Paddy Power might not be named after galactic happenings, but it did use the theme for its Star Rewards loyalty scheme. Across a variety of rooms at the same time there will be double Star Rewards on offer. Double points are also on offer every week on Stellar Sundays.

I don’t really mind where the names of sites or promotions come from as long as I am getting good value and good gameplay!

However, things don’t always go to plan even at the best run bingo sites. When I logged in yesterday the site was hosting a £500 escalator jackpot day as part of the Paddys Postcards offer. The ball count started at 29 and rose every hour. At 9pm it jumped to 53 balls and at 10pm it jumped to 63 balls.

I’m afraid I did get a bit carried away when the ball count went up and I probably spent a bit more than I normally would over a short period, but such is the excitement of possibly getting hold of a bigger jackpot. Unfortunately, I didn’t win, but three people did. However, judging from the chat straight afterwards it would appear that instead of sharing the £500 jackpot the winners received £500 each.

Now, I can’t really believe that was the intention, but neither can I see Paddy Power trying to reclaim the overpayment – that’s just not the way they play the game. There were lots of comments flying around about getting the money banked quickly, but if their reputation is correct that shouldn’t have been necessary. However, they do learn quickly and that is one overpayment error that probably won’t happen again.

It was a great session and certainly got everyone going. If the two lines went quickly we were all sure that jackpot would go that game – that went on for a while, but only served to encourage everyone to chat, even those that might not do so ordinarily. Anyway, well done to the three winners and congrats on the extra windfall. Bring on the next one!

Great withdrawal process here

I play quite a lot of online bingo as you might imagine, but don’t have a bottomless pit of money to play with. I would guess I am not alone in that. For this reason it gets very frustrating when I am lucky enough to win, but have to wait nearly 10 days for the winnings to make their way back to my account.

Now this is all well and good, but at certain times I am waiting for these funds to come back before I can play again. I know that there is a reverse feature, but that is not always suitable. It may be that I don’t need the funds while they are available to reverse, but should I lose a few times after they have progressed, the wait can seem forever.

In this day and age we know it is possible for money to transfer immediately. Indeed all our deposits are moved instantly to enable us to play and come off our available balances straight away. But only a handful of bingo sites are good enough to pull out all the stops when it comes to paying back any winnings.

Virgin Bingo, Paddy Power Bingo and William Hill Bingo are notable for the speed of crediting winnings and I would imagine that the same would be true of most of the Virtue Fusion sites. tombola bingo also has a quite speedy turnaround time.

There are some great sites out there that could be losing repeat business because of this issue and that would be a shame. Sites such as Diva Bingo, Rollover Bingo and X Bingo have quite a protracted withdrawal period, but again, this is probably down to the overall payment processor rather than the bingo sites themselves.

New bingo sites in particular could have reputations harmed by this issue, so maybe the bingo sites should be demanding that the processor improves its timescales as all business is important. There is more chance of people returning to a site and playing again with their winnings if they are happy with the overall experience than if they were kept waiting for their money and decide to look for somewhere that might be quicker next time they play.

Just a thought….. get rid of the reverse and pay out quicker. If we win with you we are more than likely to return – you don’t have to hang on the the money.