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Bingo Terms - Bingo Definitions

If you are not used to it, playing bingo in casinos, halls and churches it can be a bit confusing. This is because some Bingo callers have the habit of using their own nicknames for each number. This is because bingo has its own lingo and slang.. In essence, the use of bingo slang makes the game a little more interesting. On this page we provide bingo terms along with bingo definitions.

Bingo lingo for commonly called numbers is also prevalent online, although usually the site will provide some kind of definition of the slang that is used in the online rooms.

Here is a run down of the traditional nicknames for common numbers that you will commonly hear used online or by a bingo caller:

Bingo numbers and their common translations:

1 Translation: Kelly's Eye or On it's Own
5 Translation: Man Alive
7 Translation: Lucky for Some
8 Translation: The Garden Gate or One Fat Lady
9 Translation: Doctor's Orders or Revolution Number
10 Translation: PM's Den
11 Translation: Legs, Chicken Legs or Legs Eleven
13 Translation: Lucky for Some or Unlucky for Some
16 Translation: Sweet Sixteen
21 Translation: Key of the Door
22 Translation: Two Little Ducks
23 Translation: Thee and Me
24 Translation: Two Dozen
30 Translation: Dirty Gertie or Dirty Bertie
37 Translation: More Than Eleven
44 Translation: Droopy Drawers or also All the Fours
45 Translation: Halfway There
50 Translation: Bulls Eye or Blind 50
51 Translation: Tweak of the Thumb
55 Translation: Snakes Alive or All the Fives
57 Translation: Heinz Varieties or Heinz 57
59 Translation: Brighton Line (particular to the U.K.)
64 Translation: Red Raw
66 Translation: Clickety-Click
69 Translation: Naughty
71 Translation: Bang on the Drum
76 Translation: Trombones or (in the U.K) --Was she worth it?
79 Translation: One More Time
81 Translation: Stop and Run
86 Translation: Between the Sticks
88 Translation: Two Fat Ladies
90 Translation: Top of the Shop

As you can see some of these nicknames have a little twist or a bit of a rhyming joke to them.

If you are playing online, most casinos supply you with a help page that helps you decipher some of the nicknames. Play is a little more risky in a real casino, particularly in the UK, where it just may be assumed that you know what “Two Fat Ladies” or “Clickety Click” means.

In addition there is some slang common to most casinos that have to do with the play of the game and the layout of the room. Here is a shortlist of some of the more common terms you will here.

Front of House - the desk at the front door.

Early Bird – a regular length or short game of bingo that precedes the main game.

Eyes Down – your cue from the Bingo Caller that the game is about to begin.

Flyer - a paper bingo ticket with only one bingo game on it.

Market Bingo – a game where you play for goods or vouchers.

Other general terms and definitions you might want to be familiar with are:

Admission Packet – This is the minimum number of cards that you must buy when playing live Bingo in order to qualify as having paid the price of admission. This packet usually contains between three and eight cards per game.

Auto-purchase – This is software that automatically buys new cards for you at the beginning of a new game when you play online Bingo.

Basket Bingo – This is a special bingo game where goods in a basket are given away instead of cash.

Bingo Board – This is the electronic display board that shows each selected number as it is called. There are also online Bingo Boards displayed when you play in an online casino.

Blackout – A type of winning Bingo pattern that requires the entire card to be covered before you can win.

Buy-in – This is a simple term that simply means depositing money in exchange for participating in a Bingo game as in paying an admission or buying an admission packet.

Cash-In-Prize – This is a game of bingo where the winning prize is a cash payout, usually taken from the buy-ins collected during admission.

Catch-up – This is a computerized method that automatically marks the numbers that are called on an online Bingo player’s card.

Four corners – This is a winning Bingo pattern where a player needs to cover all the corner numbers of a card to win.

Jackpot – The big prize of the Bingo game.

Money Ball – This is a winning number that is drawn before the game starts. When a player hits this number on his or her Bingo card, a special prize is won.

Pattern – The winning graphic shape or design that players need to cover with chips or marks on the card in order to win the game. An example would the Diagonal Pattern or the Four Corners.

Payout – The percentage of the profits paid out by the Bingo Room after it has collected its admission.

Progressive Jackpot – A jackpot that grows larger every day, until it is won.

RNG – This is an acronym for a random number generator is a machine that automatically picks the numbers for a game for either live or online games.

Validation – Once you call Bingo, a Bingo caller or computer program online will check to make sure that you have correctly marked off the right numbers.

Wait – This is a nickname for the only number that a player needs to complete a pattern so he or she can call Bingo.

Wrap up – The last game of a series of Bingo games.

Mapau Bingo, an online bingo website, also offers a collection of bingo terms and their definitions. Definitely worth checking out.

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