Online Bingo

Types of Bingo – 75 Ball Vs. 90 Ball

Posted on: 11th January 2012

Nowadays, you can find three main variations of bingo online: 75-ball bingo, which is mostly played in the US; 90-ball bingo, which is played in the UK; and finally, 80-ball bingo, which is the latest variation of bingo taking online bingo halls by storm.

In this article we will look at the differences between 75-ball bingo and 90-ball bingo.

75-ball bingo

75-ball bingo (also known as ‘Pattern’ bingo) is widely popular in the United States, particularly online. A 75-ball bingo card consists of 5 rows and 5 columns – 25 squares altogether with 24 numbers between 1-75 and a free square in the centre. The numbers are arranged in columns under the letters B-I-N-G-O , which is displayed at the top of the card. The B column contains numbers from 1 to 15, I from 16 to 30, N from 31 to 45, G from 46 to 60 and O from 61 to 75. Calls are made with letter-number combinations that a player marks on his/her card until completing a designated pattern for a BINGO.

Compared to 90-ball bingo, which is also based on completing patterns, 75-ball bingo offers a wider selection of patterns, making it a more diverse and creative game to play, if not more fun. The 5 X 5 card arrangement allows for infinite pattern possibilities – anything from squares, diamonds, triangle to check marks, letters (such as T, O, A) flowers and much, much more.

90-ball Bingo

90-ball bingo is a popular UK variation of traditional bingo that is hugely popular both offline and online. There are several key differences between 90-ball and 75-ball bingo. For instance, cards are referred to as tickets. Each ticket has only 15 numbers randomly selected from numbers between 1 to 90 and which are sorted within three rows and nine columns. Every row has five numbers and four free squares. The first column has numbers from 1 to 9, the second 10 to 19, the third 20 to 29 and so, on until the last column which has numbers from 80 to 90.

90-ball bingo is almost always played with six tickets at a time, which are called strips. These strips will contain just about all the numbers in the 1 to 90 range and thus, for each number called a square will be daubed.

This version of bingo allows for three ways to win. To put it another way, for each game played a player has three opportunities to win.  The winning patterns are one horizontal line, two horizontal lines or a full house (three horizontal lines) and each winning pattern is assigned a separate prize with the simplest (a horizontal line) offering the lowest and the full house offering the highest.