Being able to play poker online has many advantages for the keen player. Accessibility has to be one of the most important, with the entertainment brought directly to your home, allowing both quick playing sessions, and access to the game around the clock. However, as all you serious poker players will know, there will always come a time when lady luck seems to be frowning on you, and a succession of bad hands leaves you little room to manoeuvre. When you hit such a losing streak, years of playing experience can do little to help you, other than providing the experience to know that taking a quick break can often be the only solution. Bingo games offer the chance to switch off your poker head, and rely simply on the luck of the draw. For the uninitiated, there are two main forms of the game, which are 75 Ball, and 90 Ball Bingo. To get a quick look at the format, try looking at the Bingo games provided by costabingo.com, a site which also offers free 90 Ball and 75 Ball Bingo games which actually pay out a jackpot.

75 Ball Bingo was invented in the US, and rather than specifying how many numbered balls will be called per game, the ‘75’ actually denotes the number range used, so that the possible numbers that can be drawn lie between 1 and 75. 75 ball bingo cards carry a 5 x 5 grid, with numbers in each of the 25 boxes, except the one right in the middle of the grid. The aim of the game is to mark off the numbers on the card as they are called, thus making a pattern on the grid. At the start of the game there is a grid pattern displayed to all players. Winning is all about getting a match between the game pattern, and the one formed on your playing cards as the numbers called are blocked out. Needless to say, each playing card contains a different pattern of numbers. Thus, 75 Ball Bingo is sometimes called pattern Bingo.

90 Ball Bingo is the UK version of the game, and is actually almost identical to the ancestor of all modern Bingo, ‘Le Lotto’, which was developed in France in the 1770’s. Each 90 ball bingo playing card has three horizontal rows, each with nine columns, although in each row only five squares contain numbers, with the other boxes blanked out. Just as with 75 Ball Bingo, you mark off numbers as they are called, and can potentially win three prizes. One full row wins a modest prize, while two full rows is better. The top prize is the Full House, where all the numbers on all three rows are called before the game ends.

There are both 75 Ball and 90 Ball games which feature progressive jackpots. If no one wins the top prize within the specified number of calls, the jackpot rolls over to the next game, getting bigger each time until someone gets the pattern, or the full house. For a more in-depth look at the rules of Bingo, try looking at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingo.