UK Bingo Uncovered

• Although internet bingo is still wet around the collar, the game itself has a long and winding tradition, dating from way back in the fifteen hundreds! The game you know & love today has been played in many forms for hundreds of years.
• Beginning as the lottery in Italy (Lo Giuoco del Lotto D�Italia), the game spread its winds and arrived in France, where it was named Le Lotto. At the time it was mainly enjoyed as a recreation for the aristocracy. The benefits of bingo games aren�t only recreational; in Germany in the eighteen hundreds the version that you are familiar now with was used to teach kid their times tables.
• From there the Lotto bug began to itch across Europe, rearing its addictive head in regional carnivals and fairs. Beano became the popular name for Lotto; a shape began to mould similar to the way you play bingo.

• A person would choose disks from a box, each numbered, & people then proceeded to conceal their numbers under beans when they corresponded to the caller�s pick! People would call out �beano!� if they concealed a downwards, across, or askew line. Then they would be rewarded with a prize.
• The appeal of bingo prizes to the masses was recognised by Ed Lowe during the 1930�s, while he was travelling across Germany. Folk law tells that while Lowe was playing Beano with his friends, a young lady called out Bingo! by accident in her enthusiasm, & that is the origin of the modern name.
• When cracks in the new game began to show themselves, with numerous people winning games each time, the Colombia University mathematician Carl Leffler was recruited to fix the problem. He revolutionised bingo (online punters today have a lot to thank him for) by working out six thousand alternative numerical versions of cards.
• Bingo cash was now collected at charity games to help struggling churches sustain themselves: it was becoming hugely popular.
• The Blotter came out around this time � a monthly newsletter containing Online Bingo reviews. An instruction manual for the game was also printed.
• Lowe could not claim rights to the original game, & so bingo slots and every other form of the game today all go by the same name.

UK Bingo was just around the corner...

• The game was played in theatres in the thirties. People were given free bingo cards when they paid themselves in at the door, & big £££ was up for grabs.
• In the nineteen sixties the game swam over to the UK. In the eighties the game was legalised nationally, & large venues / halls became the now familiar venue for bingo jackpots & good fun.
• Bingo UK�s final step was to move online, where only time will tell its success, but it is growing rapidly as we speak!