NUMBER GAMES
Bingo: a prize pool, a ticket price and a fixed slice off the top
Online bingo pays out a share of the money spent on tickets in that room, which is usually somewhere between 70% and 90% depending on the game. Nothing you do changes it, because the numbers are drawn once for everybody in the room.
Assumes a typical 90-ball room returning about 88% of ticket sales. Change the ruleset and every figure on this page moves.
Every bet, with what it costs
| Bet | Pays | House edge | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 90-ball room, standard prize split | line, two lines, full house | 12% | The room keeps its slice before any ticket is drawn |
| 75-ball pattern room | one pattern | 15% | Fewer prizes per game, larger each |
| Progressive jackpot room | full house in N calls | 20% | Part of every ticket seeds a pot that mostly is not won today |
| Free bingo room | promotional pot | 0% | Funded by the operator. Genuinely free, genuinely small |
Cheapest and most expensive on the same table are 0% and 20%. Nothing about the room changes between those two rows; the only difference is which one you tapped.
What an hour costs
Stake, times rounds an hour, times the edge. That is the whole formula and pace is the term people forget: the same game dealt twice as fast costs twice as much. The full table across every game is in what an hour costs.
Where the money goes
Every ticket sold in a room goes into one pot. The operator takes a fixed share, the rest is split between the line prizes and the full house, and then the balls are called. There is no house hand and no wheel. It is a pool with a fee.
That structure has one consequence worth understanding: the prize is a function of how many people are in the room, not of what you bought. A big jackpot means a busy room, and a busy room means longer odds on your particular ticket.
Ninety balls, seventy-five balls
The 90-ball game is the British one: three prizes a game, one line, two lines, a full house, and tickets arranged in strips of six that between them cover every number. The 75-ball game is the North American one: a five-by-five grid with a free centre square and a pattern to complete.
Neither is better value on its own. What changes the number is the room's published prize split, and rooms with a progressive attached always pay less to the ordinary prizes because part of every ticket is going somewhere else.
On a phone
- Auto-daub is the default and should stay on. Manual daubing on a phone is a dexterity test that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with keeping you in the app.
- Buying fifty tickets and buying one ticket have the same expected cost per dollar. What changes is how often you win something, which is why the ticket slider is where it is.
- Rooms are chat-heavy and chat pulls notifications. That is the single biggest thing bingo does to a phone that other games do not.
- Ticket purchase closes before the first call. A weak signal at the wrong moment means watching a game you paid for and cannot play.
Streamed versions on the board
Where the tables are
40 of the operators on our board carry live tables, 5900 between them. More tables mostly means a shorter wait at your stake level rather than a better product.
Bingo questions people actually type
What is the house edge in bingo?
12% at a typical 90-ball room returning about 88% of ticket sales. That is C$12.00 for every C$100 staked, and the worst bet on the same felt costs 20%.