B ingo calling is an art and bingo callers are the artists displaying their talent through innovative ways of calling Bingo nicknames that have been picked out. For ages Bingo callers have been using various nicknames such as, Jump & Jive (35) and Heavens Gate (78) to add fun to the interesting game of Bingo.

With the advent of various Bingo sites, the traditional trend of calling out bingo numbers has been replaced by straight bingo calling which is electronic. This new rage of calling out Bingo numbers has become quite popular these days.

There are several reasons behind the popularity of straight number calling. The new and modern generation thinks that Bingo is a thoughtful game with loads of money involved ; one cannot afford to be light-hearted and frivolous when calling out the winning numbers in such a money-minting game.

So, it is that straightforward calling is now in vogue.  It is this style of calling that helped Mandy Gorgan win the UK Caller of the Year as far back as in 2004. With Gorgan winning the hearts of bingo players all over UK with her calling style, number calling with clarity picked up popularity.

Indeed Bingo games is serious business these days with rich rewards in the form of huge jackpots. With such high stakes involved, Bingo players need to concentrate on the numbers and the funny nicknames can cause distraction. This apart, cheesy Bingo nicknames like two fat ladies for 88 may even offend the feminists out there.

Not everyone is capable of taking things lightly and if you are one of them too, you can adopt straight Bingo calling. However, the traditional style of Bingo calling is still favored by many, especially in small town Bingo halls . While it is okay to stick to the old tradition, one should also try to innovate and come out with new variants. Surely you can fabricate Bingo nicknames that would catch the fancy of younger bingo players? How about Skinny Jeans for 11?

Do you know what Bingo wings are? Now don’t get visions of a fairy bestowing you with Bingo games benefits. Bingo wings is a popular slang used in the West to describe the built-up fat that hangs from the upper arms of elderly, fat women!

There are numerous nicknames for this unfortunate piece of flesh which women Bingo players are notorious for! They include mooney arms, bat wings, tuck shop arms, dinner lady arms, nanna wobble and so on. But the term Bingo wing is by far the most popular as it is commonly spotted on women who frequent Bingo halls, daubing the numbers. Also because when these Bingo playing women cry out Bingo and hold up their tickets, there is simply no missing the triceps!

Do you have those flabby Bingo wings? There are many specific exercises prescribed to reduce them. Just do a Google search with any of the terms listed above and get started! However, if you are one of those who does not care about these little imperfections, and just want to have a good time playing Bingo, there is news for you. Tubby body frames are being noticed, appreciated and even awarded these days. So make the most of having the most!

As recently as on September 15, 2008, there was an anti-size zero campaign at the Natural History Museum in London. The campaign included a group of fat ladies dancing and flaunting their over-sized assets. The banners for this campaign proclaimed: “Size zero so passe…give me Bingo wings any day!!!”

You can also proudly shake your bingo wings to the tunes of the song, “Goodbye to size zero, Hello to big girls” starring pop icon, Christopher Biggins.

In fact, an on-going competition for the best Bingo wings has thrown up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the big to be bigger still! Entries with photos or video clips will be previewed and judged in a “Bingo Wings Idol” competition. The winner will be featured in a commercial that is proposed to be aired in the UK and around the world. So Bingo wings should not make you shy away and hide; on the other hand, be bold and flaunt the flab!

However if it is actually giving you a complex and you don’t want to step out anymore, you can always turn to online Bingo.  We at 123bingoonline understand your sensitivity and don’t poke fun at women who just want to have a good time. If all the talk about Bingo wings makes you up in arms against such Bingo halls or sites, you know you can always play at our site.

Hate to tell you this…there is a dark side to Bingo as well. It is all very well for us to rejoice hearing stories of big wins and revelry linked to online Bingo or Bingo Hall games. Let us not gloss over the incidents that prove that Bingo players can behave quite irresponsibly at times.

Not this, Baby Shower Bingo!
Take for instance, the parents of a one-year-old infant. Today, they face imprisonment up to a year for abandoning their child –left locked up in the car with the windows closed –in order to play Bingo at a club in Calle Mancor, Palma in Spain.
Though they claimed that they were checking on the infant frequently, it transpires they were engrossed in the Bingo game for three hours. They did not surface even when the cops arrived and ascertained the vehicle registration and ownership details –an exercise that took a good half hour.

Nickels Room, Beware!
Recently two women aged all of 60 and 85 respectively turned a lazy Bingo game into a tug-of-war in Texas. They were old friends who played regularly at the Del Rio Senior Citizens Centre. One of them suspected that the other had not dropped her nickels in the pot and did a manual check, counting the money out loud. This angered the other who started an argument. The verbal duel soon turned violent and the duo grabbed each other’s hair and clawed their faces. The sister of one of the women also jumped in to lend her support, and all three were bruised. They were admonished for spoiling a fun-game and sent home to cool down. They have also been barred from from playing Bingo at the Centre for 90 days.

Bingo Battery
We have heard of utensils, hair brushes and perhaps flower vases being flung around by angry couples. However a couple in Illinois hurt each other with Bingo daubers! Here is how it happened: Ms Chyrl S Miller returned home after 10 pm one night after playing Bingo. She found the door locked. Though she opened one lock with the key she had, the other had to be unlocked only with the key her husband had.

With growing anger, she hammered on the door to wake up Mr Jerry J Pitts. When he finally came to the door and opened it, she could not control her rage and lashed out at him with her purse. The Bingo dauber fell out and both of them took turns to use it as weapon against each other.
The police moved the couple to the Sangamon County Jail for domestic violence, after finding both injured.

Cheques by Post!

Patricia Barnes had been handling Royal Mail special postal delivery in Norwich, England for 14 long years. She had developed a gambling addiction alongside. To fund her online Bingo craze and slot machine gaming sprees, she stole more than £75,000 in cash and cheques to pay for her addiction to slot machines and online bingo.
The thefts were carried out between April 2007 and June 2008 and were in breach of the highest degree of trust that the public places in postal services. Hence she was sentenced to one year imprisonment. Interestingly, the judge Philip Brooke-Smith, observed: “I accept this was done to support a gambling habit that’s made very easy indeed with the availability of the Internet.”

I have been playing Bingo in land-based Bingo halls for years. I love playing Bingo but I have grown old now and find it difficult to walk even to the nearest Bingo hall in my neighborhood. This made me depressed and irritable. One day my grandson suggested that I should try out online Bingo halls. He even helped me open an account at a good online Bingo site and I proudly took on my new ID- JACKIESMOM.

The moment I entered the Bingo room, I was bewildered by the atmosphere. I saw the Bingo cards and they looked familiar enough, alright. But the chat window, the automatic and manual daub options, graphics — they were all so very different compared to land Bingo halls. I am so used to seeing people, and have always concentrated on the numbers called. Daubing the numbers is a project by itself.

To confuse me further, as soon as I typed in “Hello” in the online Bingo chat window, the chat host replied “YW JACKIESMOM HUN!” The term YW left me a little perplexed. When I asked the chat host about it, he told me that YW stands for “You are welcome” in the new-age Bingo terminology.

Understanding that I was new to the world of online Bingo, the chat host guided me on how to buy Bingo tickets and wait for the game to begin. When I thanked him, he replied, “YVW!” It was not too difficult to figure that out — “You are Very Welcome?” and I began to feel at home.

But my comfort was short-lived. The chat-host asked me, “Would you like to play our new CG JACKIESMOM?” I was confused. The friendly chat host told me all about chat games. Wow! A sub-game that players can play while the main Bingo game is on, with the auto dauber in operation! Now, that is what I call a Bingo edge. Soon, I was playing chat games as well as betting on the Bingo patterns like a veteran online Bingo player. I even won a chat game and was richer by $2, thanks to 2BBs (bonus bucks) awarded by the CG. See, I am catching on

But there was one other problem. I excitedly typed in Kelly’s Eye when the number 1 was called. One of the player’s asked me what I talking about. I found that the new players and even the Bingo Caller on this site was sticking to straight calling. Many of the online Bingo players were totally oblivious to all those funny calling terms that good ‘ol Bingo is known for!

I took it upon myself to introduce my new Bingo friends to the classical Bingo lingo. The response was, “WTG (Way To Go) JACKIESMOM!”

One of them politely directed me to sites where callers use older terms as well. I visited them, but soon tired of typing in Choo Choo Thomas (for 58) and Jump and Jive (for 35). I was missing out on the CGs and felt like the OL. (That’s chat lingo for Old Lady, dearies…oops, QT). So I decided to play Bingo the way it is played online.

Soon, I was chatting, playing CGs… and guess what?  Whoever said,”When In Rome Do As the Romans Do” sure knew what he was speaking about. TTFN.

Do you know what number the term “ two fat ladies” refers to? Or, who is considered the father of Bingo? Give up? Well, the term “two fat ladies” refers to number 88, and Edwin S. Lowe is considered as the father of Bingo.

There is much more to Bingo than simply daubing the numbers on your cards. Bingo is surrounded by many interesting facts and terms. Wanna find out? Here we go:

What was Bingo called in the beginning?

Bingo was called Beano initially. In Beano, a special “marker” was used to mark numbers. Can you name that? You may be surprised, but beans were used by players to mark the numbers called in Beano! The players just placed the bean on a disc carrying the letter and number called out.

Ever wondered how Beano was renamed as Bingo? It all happened during a carnival when a player got too excited and yelled “Bingo!” instead of Beano. This eventually led to the renaming of the game as Bingo.

Since then Bingo has spread far and wide and is now quite popular around the world.

In Australia and the UK, Bingo is known by a different name. What do you think that name is?

If you say, Housie, you get full points. As a matter of fact, it is played with 90 balls and a different Bingo card called ticket is used to mark numbers.

Looking for more questions? Let’s talk about online Bingo. Do you know what Bingo Bucks (BBS) are? It is a special way Bingo websites thank you for playing Bingo with them. You can use Bingo Bucks to play Bingo games but you cannot withdraw them directly.

What do you think people refer to when they say Bingo chat games?

When you play Bingo online, you can join the chat room opened for a particular game. The person who controls the chat in a chat room, called a chat host, often comes up with short games based on numbers, events and themes to keep players engaged and excited.

The popularity of Bingo has led to the development of many similar bingo games. Can you name one game that closely resembles Bingo?

The game is called Keno. It is played in casinos, both offline and online.

Bingo has been around for many years . Can you guess how old this game really is ? More than 450 years! It is one of the oldest games out there. No wonder the old and elderly seem to have a natural affinity towards it!

Do you know who invented Bingo cards that are still used? That man was known as Carl Leffler. He invented about 6,000 different Bingo cards and promptly turned insane! Beware, too much of anything is dangerous. We don’t want players to meet with a similar fate. So play with restraint, don’t go overboard.

Which is why we will stop here and come back later with some more Bingo tidbits.

Bingo –the word conjures up a picture of crowded Bingo halls where elders are busy striking off those lucky numbers on Bingo tickets, engaging in banter with their Bingo friends.

I still remember how I envied my parents their ‘right’ to play Bingo while I was allowed was a peep into the Bingo halls. The loud calling of Bingo numbers and the exultant screams made me curious and I constantly dreamed about playing Bingo. But the kids these days are lucky. Thanks to British government’s behavior expert, Sir Alan Steer. Steer seems to believe that the only way to keep children out of trouble’s way is to have them play Bingo!

Taking a cue from Steer’s findings, teachers are now warming up to the game. Well, it is said that it is far simpler to teach children through example rather than preaching. So do not be surprised to find teachers playing Bingo first. The way things are progressing, Bingo will soon make it to the textbooks and the school curriculum as well!

We in the Bingo industry had long since recognized the powers of Bingo. What Sir Alan Steer has said today, we practiced years ago! Take a look at all those math bingo, English Bingo, science Bingo and alphabetical bingo to know what we mean.

Mathematical Bingo cards is the most thrilling way of introducing students to various basic arithmetic calculations like, subtraction, addition, multiplication and division.

To encourage strong vocabulary, teachers can also prepare Bingo cards with words printed on it and distribute it among the students. They then call out the meanings or synonyms and students can mark the words corresponding to these definitions. For instance, if the teacher says “dark, dull and dismal” then students must mark the word dingy that holds the same meaning and may appear on the card! .

The same concept can be applied to different subjects to help students increase their knowledge on grammar, science, history, current affairs and general knowledge .

Three Cheers to Bingo Games!