However skilful you are, poker is always a dance with the unpredictable Lady Luck. If you find that you’ve got a few metaphorical broken toes after a session of high stakes salsa it can be difficult not to veer into the dangerous territory of on-tilt play. Whatever your reason for needing a break from the table, free online bingo at Costa Bingo offers the chance to try a more gentle form of gaming where the stakes are, well, nothing! However, unlike your favourite online poker sites, free online bingo at Costa Bingo is not practice play, but the real deal, offering modest prizes in a risk free environment.
Costa Bingo offer several no deposit Bingo games, which cover both main forms of the game: 75 Ball bingo, and 90 Ball bingo. If you have yet to try either, here is a quick rundown on how these simple yet engaging games work.
75 ball bingo is the north American version of the game, and is sometimes known as pattern bingo. This is because the aim of the game is to match the grid pattern which is displayed to all players before play starts, with player’s cards starting to display a pattern as numbers called are marked off or ‘daubed’. Naturally, the grid layout for the game is the same format as the bingo cards used by players.
Each 75 ball bingo card has a five by five box grid, with the middle square already filled in. Every other square contains a randomly selected number. Above each of the five vertical columns are one of the letters which spell out: ‘B-I-N-G-O’, and these letters are used by the caller to identify which column the number he is calling may appear in. As the name suggests, 75 ball bingo in the traditional bingo hall is played with balls numbered 1 to 75. The possible numbers that can appear in each vertical column of playing cards are evenly distributed, and so the first ‘B’ column can contain numbers between 1 and 15, the second ‘I’ column 16 – 30, and so on.
90 ball bingo is the UK version of the game, and is quite similar to the first forms of Bingo which developed in Italy and France several hundred years ago. Playing grids are 9 x 3, with each of the three horizontal rows containing five numbers – the other squares are blanked out. Possible number distribution is evenly shared between the nine vertical columns, and so the first can hold numbers 1 to 10, the second 11 to 20 etc. Patterns mean nothing in 90 ball bingo, with prizes awarded simply for marking off one horizontal row, or two rows, or the full card – famously known as the ‘Full House’!
As part of the march of progress, manually daubing cards is no longer required – this process can now be automated, allowing players to kick back, relax, and get sociable with the chat function, safe in the knowledge that a winning card will always scoop a prize.
