Let's bust the bingo myths

Although bingo reviews are supposed to be a bit of fun to provide readers with a bit more practical knowledge of how a site plays and the offers and promotions they run, they are often used to air grievances about bingo sites where a player may have had a bad experience. This is fine and may also help other readers when making decisions about where to play, but sometimes they do concentrate on what we call the 'famous bingo myths'.

While we have no definitive answers as to why any of these myths developed or how they can be dispelled once and for all we will certainly try right here, right now.

1)  Online bingo is 'fixed' - Why would online bingo operators want to try and 'fix' the outcome of a game. They are committed to paying out a certain level of prize money under their licence and to that end they care not a jot who wins the pot. A percentage of every stake is counted towards a prize pot and the rest is for tax, running costs and of course, profit.

2)  Players are allowed to win in free games so they are encouraged to deposit - how could that possibly be logistically possible with all the new players that join online bingo sites every day. That would require a significant investment in technology to monitor ticket sales constantly and who was playing and how long they have been members. Totally unrealistic.

3)  Players are allowed to win when they first join a site - again logistically very unlikely for the same reasons as above.

4)  Joining a room or buying tickets with seconds to spare means you are more likely to win - why? bingo numbers are produced by random number generator machines so the sequence of balls is just that - random. If that were the case no-one would ever pre-buy tickets as they would never stand a chance of winning.

5)  There is a mathematical system that can be used to win - this would require players to be able to pick and choose cards and monitor hundreds of games, but again is a total myth as you can't choose the sequence of numbers on a particular card and has just been perpetuated by bloggers that know nothing about bingo.

6)  Sites have 'hot balls' that appear often than others - some numbers may appear be 'hot' for a while, but with only 75, 80 or 90 to go at and hundreds of games played every day that is bound to happen even in any random system - the laws of probability say so.

7) The biggie - sites have the same winners programmed to take the prizes - this would be so obvious to any regulator after a very short period of time that anyone that tried it would get shut down very quickly. Some people can afford more tickets than others so their chance of winning is greater. People often play in more than one room, so their name could appear in more than one place making it more noticeable. There are days when luck shines on us all and we win a few games - does that make us a 'same winner' in the pay of the site we are playing at. No, we regard ourselves as having a lucky streak, thank you.

At the end of the day there are so many bingo games being run simoultaneously at so many bingo sites and often players are in more than one room - how could anything keep track of each individual player to allocate them more wins than anyone else for any of the reasons shown above. Cost alone in trying to do this would be prohibitive.

Online bingo sites are not run as charities and we all know that any business requires to make a profit. Bingo sites can manage this quite well without resorting to underhand methods. The probability of the numbers on a bingo ticket coming out is no different to guessing the outcome of the toss of a coin or how often it will land on head or tails, just with 90 variations.

As long as operators provide us with a decent bonus, an enjoyable place to play with decent jackpots and promotions and friendly chat hosts to ensure everyone gets along, then hopefully the bingo wins will come along in their own good time.

Let's put these myths behind us and enjoy our online bingo fun as just that, fun with the chance of being a winner if we are lucky. More to the point let's not begrudge the lucky winners their luck and hope that it is us next. We may make rude gestures at the screen if we have been beaten to the prize, but that's just where the frustration should stay, in mid air and not in print in chat.

WhichBingo firmly believes in the integrity of the online bingo business and will continue to play at all the sites we write about to prove it.

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