If you’re fancying a game of bingo, then you’re going to need a bingo card in order to play along. Bingo cards (or bingo tickets) are simple to understand and are almost similar to lottery tickets, in the sense they are what you need to mark off numbers in order to win.

They’re an essential to any type of bingo you wish to play, whether it be online bingo, mobile bingo or offline at the many bingo halls up and down the country.

Below you’ll find all you need to know about bingo cards, what they do and the many variations you’ll find as bingo variants expand and bring in new types of customers…

What is a Bingo Card?

A bingo card is the piece of card or board that you play off. Every player will receive a bingo card when they buy in to a game. They all carry a set of numbers across a grid, with the aim of the game to mark off all the numbers as the caller calls out numbers.

The volume of numbers on a card is dependent on the type of game you are playing, although they will generally follow the same format and are pretty unmistakable.

In some cases, and in particularly online with the likes of 75-ball bingo you can play with multiple bingo tickets these days, but don’t worry there are plenty of features which can help you keep up, with technology now doing much of the dabbing for you.

Ways to Win on a Bingo Card

Before the rise of online bingo, players would have to use a marker pen, known as a dabber, to mark off the numbers on their card as they were called out. In offline bingo that is still the case, so you have to be quick off the mark when it comes to playing.

There are a number of ways in which you can win on a bingo card, with many depending on the type of bingo game you are playing. There are however two main methods of winning when playing bingo. These are:

• First to complete a line: This prize is given to the first player to complete a full line on a bingo card.
• First to complete full card: This is the main prize and given to the player who completes their card first.

Other variants will offer more prizes, however. Often you’ll find prizes for the first player to complete two lines, while Swedish Bingo gives players five prizes to win, for the completion of one, two, three and four lines, alongside the full house.

Online Bingo Cards

Online bingo cards are much the same as offline bingo cards and work in exactly the same way, with players required to complete the lines and cards in order to win.

There are a number of useful features with online cards though, so you aren’t required to concentrate as hard. Most cards will be automatically marked off as you play, while you will also find features to help you play multiple cards.

Things like automatic card sorting, and card highlighting, which will tell you when one of the cards you’re playing with is close to a line or full house, are incredibly useful and really improve overall gameplay.

You’ll also find fun animations and bonus rounds which you wouldn’t get in an offline bingo scenario. In terms of how they look though, the format does not sway too far from the bingo cards we’ve been playing for generations.

Bingo Card Variations

You will find a number of variations these days though. As bingo games become more and more diverse, so does the way we play. For example, while a slingo bingo card may look the same as a normal bingo card, you also have a slot machine to contend with, while games such as roulette bingo, available at a number of bingo sites, use the roulette table as a bingo card.

The likes of 90-ball bingo, 75-ball bingo are fairly similar in how their bingo cards look, just with different size grids to suit the number of balls in the game. 52-ball bingo on the other hand is slightly different, with players dealt cards rather than given a bingo card.

You can find out more about the different variations of bingo and how they work by visiting our Bingo Games page.