Bingo Odds a Beginners guide

I wonder if anyone has ever thought about the mathematical probability of any given player winning a game of bingo. Well most people would think no way can that be calculated.

The truth is that you can calculate your chances of winning quite easily, but only in theoretical terms. The reason being, is you would need two pieces of information to calculate it:

1. You would need to know the number of cards you are playing in that game.
2. You would need to know the total number of bingo cards being played in the same game.

Obviously, the first bit of information is easy to find out, if you have bought three bingo cards then you know you are playing three bingo cards in that game.

The second piece of information is not so easy to find out, but let’s say if you could find out, you can easily calculate your chances of winning as follows:

Your chance of winning is the number of cards you are playing divided by the total number of cards in play, times by 100. This is to show the result as a percentage.

For example, if you are playing with 5 bingo cards and you have worked out that there 400 bingo cards in play, you would calculate 5 divided by 400 times by 100 equals 1.25%. If you are playing with 10 cards and there are only 100 bingo cards in play, the odds of you winning become 10%. This is 10 divided by 100 times by 100.

Although it is not entirely practical to work out the specific odds in every game of bingo you play, if you have a basic understanding of this formula it will help you to know what your chances are in the game. So, the more bingo cards you buy, and the fewer cards played against you, the more chance you have of winning.

The big question is what can you do with this information? The simplest option is to adopt two rules of thumb:

1. When choosing which bingo site to join, choose the one with the lowest number of players, i.e. a brand new one or one that is not so popular. Enter the chat rooms first as these should be quite quiet. Fewer members mean fewer cards in play.

2. Try and play as many tickets as you can afford, not forgetting buying 10 tickets for 10 games would be better than playing 5 tickets for 20 games. This is of course presuming you are playing to win and not just for fun or to pass the time away.