A couple of days ago I went to play bingo with some coworkers of mine. Yup, bingo. No longer relegated to grandmothers with blue hair, bingo has been slowly taking a turn to appeal to a younger (still dominantly female) audience. Well, at least in the UK.
The bingo hall was much much bigger than I expected. Here's about half the room:
When the game started the numbers are called out by a guy standing on the front stage:
And dudes, the game is FAST. And it's not like "B-24... that's B... 24...". They say a number from 1 through 90 and you have to find that number on your set of game cards. They just ramble a number one after another with barely a pause until someone shouts bingo. Well actually, I don't think I heard anyone say "Bingo". More like, "Yup!" or "Yeah!". I wish I won, I could totally see myself shouting "Aw yeah bingo biotches!"
For each round you can win 3 ways: Across 1 row, 2 rows or all three rows (full house). We had two winners in our group who got £10-£15. Why are people getting so excited about such little returns? Well some rounds are actually "linked" to other Bingo halls around the country and everyone plays to win £10,000+ for a full house! Nae bad at all.
Me, I didn't do so good at first. All the numbers being shouted out is not very good for my Maths Fears. But after I realize I don't have to do anything with the numbers besides essentially point at them, I did start to enjoy dotting my cards with the special pen:
Yeah I'm totally into blue nail polish right now.
In between rounds you could also play mini Bingo with these cards at the table:
But I didn't play because Ho-Lee-Sheet, the girl who says the numbers over the loud speaker is FAST! And she uses this sing songey voice that insists on drilling a hole in your ear to drive you to the brink of insanity.